The Implicit Association Test (IAT) - Essay Sample

The Implicit Association Test (IAT), developed by Anthony Greenwald, a social scientist at the University of Washington, has become by far the most commonly used tool for measuring the extent of implicit bias harbored by different individuals towards different sets of associations. The core function of the Implicit Association Test is to assess the ability of the human brain to link concepts which may range from simple cases such as associating flowers with words such as pretty to more serious associations such as "black" and "bad" (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Though widely used by social psychologists all over the world, a good number of them still find the cognitive associations measured by the IAT to be somewhat lacking and highly related to "implicit bias." They believe that the bias associated with the Implicit Association Test can easily act as an influence on some subtle discrimination forms. However, its uptake and increasing use in the lab to measure behavioral and attitude inclination has been cited by other scientists as being due to its dependability and flexibility in applied and fundamental research. This has seen its popularity increase drastically over the past decade leading to it being featured in newspapers and Television and also garnering millions of visits to its official site. Critiques, however, beg to differ citing some of its major weaknesses as enough reasons for it not to be let into the public domain. Though the Implicit Association Test has in some instances led to conclusive research findings, it still falls short of capturing the actual attitudes of those subjected to it. This makes it prone to bias which consequently affects the outcome of the test making it less reliable as a tool for measuring people's attitudes and behaviors, especially in racial matters.

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One of the major criticisms that face the IAT is its use of improper psychometric assessments. These evaluations act as a source of its major weaknesses, a view shared by critics such as Hart Blanton, a psychologist from the Texas A&M University. According to Blanton, IAT's psychometric failings serve as the main reason as to why it ought not to be introduced into the public sphere. He argues that with test scores that range from -2.0 to 2.0, the test fails to capture the attitudes of people with scores that fall below or above this range. Likewise, a score of 0, which is assumed to represent neutral behavioral traits according to the test, implies that a person with a test score of zero is likely to treat in-group and out-group members equally. This is, however, not the case as a test score of zero has a high correspondence with in-group bias. Brian Nosek, an Information Technologist at the University of Virginia, conquers with Blanton claiming that the Implicit Association Test makes use of arbitrary instead of actual metrics to obtain various social psychological conclusions (Greenwald, Banaji, & Nosek, 2015). With questionable measurability standards, the IAT thus fails to address various pertinent issues critical in the social psychology field lessening its importance as a source of extracting information from people based on their attitudes.

The sensitivity of the Implicit Association Test to the social environment and context in which it is performed also acts as one of its major shortcomings. Its test-retest reliability is quite low. It is quite sensitive to the subject matter of the moment meaning that the scores are likely to change with a change in the social context in which the tests are taken (Greenwald, McGhee &Schwartz, 1998). What this means is that it then becomes a bit challenging to give an overall overview of what certain scores mean given that they are likely to change anytime. The test is thus considered to be a state and trait characteristic which is not as reliable compared to personality traits, and neither is it comparable to mood but falls in between. Ohio State University psychologist Russell Fazio states that the test lacks modalities of determining whether the tests are based on unconscious attitudes or associations emanating from the environment. These characteristics imply that the IAT is not the best tool to measure attitudes contrary to most people's perceptions and beliefs.

The Implicit Association Test is also limited in its ability to predict explicit measures related to feelings towards certain people or things. Greenwald and Banaji, the pioneers of the test, clearly state that it is better placed to measure behavioral characteristics rather than feelings (Greenwald, Banaji, & Nosek, 2015).The inability of the IAT to predict behavioral traits termed as discriminatory nullifies its usefulness and make it less dependable contrary to what its proponents think of it. The Implicit Association Test primarily makes use of differences in reaction times to outline its findings. These differences have not been proven to have any association with behaviors and attitudes depicted in the real world. For instance, it makes no sense to associate a person with a high IAT score with implicit biases unless in a sense trivial to the term. This, therefore, adds onto the shortcomings that IAT has as a tool for measuring behavioral attitudes.

Though used as a measure of the difference in reaction times, the IAT has resulted in overheated language and qualms in the social spheres. It's no longer viewed as a test that seeks to measure implicit bias but rather as a medium of propelling racial feelings. It is now more significant as a pro-white or anti-black feelings indicator with critics perceiving it as a tool that outlines the implicit preferences for the whites over the blacks (Hammer & Marsh, 2015). Taken out of context or not, the intentions for which the test was developed, marred with controversy, have proven unreliable as a tool for determining people's attitudes.

The possibility of falsifying the Implicit Association Test and the difficulty therein in detecting the false results comes out strongly as one of its primary weaknesses in determining its dependability and validity. Perceptions about and feelings towards in-group and out-group members can easily be masked by an individual while taking the test as it is widely dependent on the context within which it is taken. Also, individuals participating in the test can slow down responses intentionally for questions that are deemed to be relatively easy or speed up their responses to more difficult prompts (Hammer & Marsh, 2015). With such challenges that tend to undermine the reliability of the test, it then becomes an uphill task to determine the real attitudes of those subjected to the test.

The IAT is structurally limited as the measures obtained reflect a given group's feelings or attitudes without accounting for individual opinions. This means that the results obtained, though not a representation of individual feelings, may be used to pass judgment on a person who does not necessarily share the same ideas (Maison, 2016). For example, one community may share a general view about people from a different community based on summed up results from a test they were subjected. Those views, however, do not stand for the opinion of every person who belongs to that community as some may have differing views. The Implicit Association Test, therefore, falls short of accounting for such personal attitudes making its use and scores less valid.

The shortcomings of IAT as a tool for measuring people's attitudes and behaviors has posed profound difficulties to its theory of putting tags on people based on test scores obtained from the test. Though it has proven useful to those whose primary concern is racism and racial inclinations; blacks and whites about their mostly out-group biases, it has had its fair share of limitations in as far as people's general attitudes are concerned. It certainly is not plausible to use two digits to change people's perception and influence scientific outcomes concerning certain sensitive issues that the society is grappling with. The engineers of the Implicit Association Test developed it with noble intentions, but it is not always that noble intentions lay a foundation for sound public policies. IAT, as it is, has quite a handful challenges that either weakens its reliability, validity or both. The limited scope of the test, its susceptibility to faking and manipulation of the results, and its inability to capture individual attitudes makes it less preferable as a measure of attitudes and behaviors. Unless such limitations and shortcomings are concisely addressed and appropriate changes introduced into the test to make it more dependable, its ability to correctly portray real attitudes and behavior is likely to remain as limited as it currently is.

References

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

Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: the implicit association test. Journal of personality and social psychology, 74(6), 1464.

Hammer, J. L., & Marsh, A. A. (2015). Why do fearful facial expressions elicit behavioral approach? Evidence from a combined approach-avoidance implicit association test. Emotion, 15(2), 223.

Maison, D. (2016). Implicit Association Test (IAT): Using Computer-Based Methods to Measure Consumer Implicit Attitudes. In Selected Issues in Experimental Economics (pp. 107-124). Springer International Publishing.