Formation of Attitudes: Implicit Association Tests (IATs) - Paper Example

Implicit Association tests (IATs) are designed to measure the level of association people have with certain concepts or attitude objects, and are increasingly becoming popular attitude and behavior measuring tools in modern social and phycology fields. Attitude formation in the use of IAT tests result from the participants tendency to make predictable revelations of their emotions, cognitive processes, and behavior, in which case, the general feelings that a participant has about a certain object, person, or concept is revealed in his or her responses during the IAT test (Teige-Mocigemba et al., 2016). Attitudes form because of past encounters and experiences in relation to a certain concept, person, or object, which though overtly, influence a persons opinion about the concept, object or person and consequently, the feelings associated with them (Bar-Anan & Nosek, 2014). Studies conducted to investigate the formation of attitudes among people using IAT and other similar tests have revealed that: attitudes mainly result from interaction with the social environment or an individuals psychological needs, and that these are implicitly revealed in a persons general behavior, implying that they can be predicted.

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How Personal Implicit Biases Can Form Understandings at a Local, National or Global Level

Implicit bias is a natural human condition that is universally evident. This implies that implicit bias has a great deal to play in how understanding is brought about locally, nationally and at the global level. This is so because implicit bias in itself amounts to some form of discrimination or preferential tendencies that influence how decisions are made by an individual or group of persons (Teige-Mocigemba et al., 2016). In a local setting for instance, understanding of concepts by members is likely to reflect the general attitude held by the locals in the particular setting. For a concept like weight, locals may generally have a negative attitude towards fat people when compared to thin people, which may however remain concealed and unrevealed even to them, but make implicit revelations in their behavior (Greenwald et al., 2015). This may be evidenced in a general preference towards certain lifestyles and eating habits. If adopted nationally or globally, the implicit bias may be reflected in the performance of competing commodities, whereby, those that promote weight loss would be a favorite to a majority of consumers. Thus, implicit biases are inevitably reflected in the general understanding that is held by locals and members of the global community.

Strengths of IAT as a Research Tool

The use of IAT tests as a research tool for measuring attitudes and behaviors provides researchers with a number of advantages, making the tools preferred over others in experimental studies. One strength provided by the tool is its high level of applicability, which implies that the tool can be used in multiple settings like: in job environments to measure prejudices among employees; and in schools, while investigating learner attitudes towards a certain discipline (Hahn et al., 2014).

Another strength is that the tool can be used without fear of susceptibility to bias or social preferences and desirabilitys. This is because the tool enables researchers to manipulate concept and object evaluation combinations to minimize the participants control over their responses. Thus, the tools guarantees high levels of reliability (Nosek & Banaji, 2016).

IAT tests may also reveal certain attitudes that would otherwise remain unknown to the individual. This makes them particularly useful and highly applicable in educational and clinical settings (Teige-Mocigemba et al., 2016). This aspect is a strength since it increases the participants personal awareness.

Weaknesses of IAT as a Research Tool

One major weaknesses associated with IAT tests is the entire reliance on interpretation by the researcher or psychologists, which creates room for bias and potential misinterpretation (Greenwald et al., 2015). In other words, interpretation of responses from IAT tests is not done using standardized tools or approaches, this therefore ties the nature of outcomes to the researches personality and condition during interpretation. It is therefore possible to have contradicting attitude measurement about an individual when different researchers perform independent tests on him or her (Bar-Anan & Nosek, 2014). Another prime weakness associated with IAT tests is that they do not measure the persons belief; rather, they rely on interpretation, which is a less determinant aspect of a persons attitude when compared to the individual beliefs held by the person (Nosek & Banaji, 2016). This implies that the tests cannot be reliably used to determine a persons actual attitude towards a concept, object or other person.

Personal Reflection

I think the results from the IAT tests have been far-fetched because they only reflect my dislike for any additional weight that qualifies one as fat. Also, I disagree with the idea that my dislike for being fat has anything to do with the person. In addition, I disagree with the notion that I prefer thin people over fat people, which has never occurred to me in the past. I feel that my attitude for thin and fat people is the same and that a moderate automatic preference for thin people overfat people does not actually capture my attitude or preference whether implicitly or explicitly. I therefore disagree with my personal results from the IAT test.

References

Bar-Anan, Y., & Nosek, B. A. (2014). A comparative investigation of seven indirect attitude measures. Behavior research methods; 46(3), 668-688

Greenwald, A. G., Banaji, M. R., & Nosek, B. A. (2015). Statistically small effects of the Implicit Association Test can have societally large effects.

Hahn, A., Judd, C. M., Hirsh, H. K., & Blair, I. V. (2014). Awareness of implicit attitudes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(3), 1369.

Nosek, B. A., & Banaji, M. R. (2016). (At least) two factors moderate the relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes.

Teige-Mocigemba, S., Klauer, K. C., & Sherman, J. W. (2016). A practical guide to Implicit Association Task and related tasks