Implicit-association test (IAT)

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a series of questions intended to assess a person’s level of unconscious prejudices or biases. The person taking the test is instructed to answer the questions as quickly as possible, and any pauses, even slight ones, are believed to reveal bias. Once the person completes the ten-minute test, the results are tabulated and analyzed to determine patterns of hesitation that are thought to be the result of prejudice. In addition to being used in laboratory settings, the test is available online for self-administration and automated tabulation and reporting of findings. However, some researchers have raised concerns about the validity of the test for revealing prejudices and biases in individuals, and find the tests more appropriate for assessing prejudices and biases in large groups.

Background

It is very common for people to have prejudices or biases. These are opinions about someone or something that are not based on rational thought or actual experience. For example, a person who says they do not like broccoli even though they have never tasted it is exhibiting a bias against broccoli.

Experts acknowledge that nearly everyone has some form of prejudice or bias. Some biases are about things that can cause little harm, such as a person not liking a food even though they have never tasted it. Other times, people are aware that they have a bias or prejudice and put conscious effort into not letting it affect their behavior. For example, a person who is biased against broccoli but finds it on the menu when having dinner at a friend’s house may eat it to be polite despite the dislike.

Prejudices and biases cause problems when they become the basis for people’s actions. If a person in charge of hiring at a company is prejudiced against women or against someone of a particular race and does not hire them because of it, it is unfair to the people seeking the job. It can also affect the company because it might not be getting the best candidate for the position due to prejudice.

Overview

Biases and prejudices can become an issue, whether conscious or unconscious. This means that whether the person is aware of a prejudice or not, it can still affect actions. For instance, experts say it is common for people to have an unconscious preference toward others who are like them in appearance. As a result, they may have an unconscious bias against people of a different race, gender, nationality, or other aspects of appearance. Even if people are not aware that they see others in a different light, experts say it can cause people with an unconscious prejudice or bias to act differently toward people who are different from them.

American social psychologists Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji developed the Implicit Association Test (IAT) in 1995 as a means to assess people for these unconscious, negative feelings. The test recognizes the fact that the human mind inherently looks for how things are the same and different as a way of making sense of the world. However, it seeks to identify when people associate things or people that are different with things that are in some way negative or less desirable. The premise behind the test is that identifying and making people aware of these unconscious biases and prejudices will help people address them and avoid acting on them.

The test is administered on a computer. A series of images or pairs of words is flashed on the screen, and the person taking the test presses a specified key on the computer to give the answers. The test can be designed to assess prejudices or biases against any group of people. Depending on the type of prejudice the test is designed to assess, it might show a series of faces and ask the person to identify each face by race.

The test also shows pairs of words that combine a descriptive word for each race, along with traits that are usually considered good or bad. The pairs will mix up options, such as “white/good, black/bad” and “white/bad, black/good.” The test taker is only given an option to agree or disagree with each pair; there is no opportunity for splitting answers, and no option not to answer. The computer measures and records how long it takes the person to decide between the options.

The assumption behind the test is that people will answer quickly for things with which they are in complete agreement and will take longer to answer when they are attempting to suppress a bias. This effort to suppress happens whether the person is consciously aware of their reaction to the image or word pairs and worried about how their answer will appear, or if they are unaware of their reaction. The IAT assumes that the questions where the person pauses the longest—even if it is just a fraction of a second—indicate a potential prejudice or bias.

Once the test was administered, it soon gained interest from the media and was featured on television news programs and in newspapers. Free online versions that people could take on their own were developed, and people began assessing their own reactions to the test. The attention not only increased awareness of the test but also uncovered the fact that the results were difficult to replicate. A person could take the same test several times, either in succession or over time, and get radically different results. This has led some experts to suggest that the test may not be an accurate way to assess unconscious prejudices in individuals. However, it is believed that combining results from many different people can provide an aggregate reading of prejudices in a population. To improve the validity and application of IATs, researchers continually work to refine and improve the test. For example, Project Implicit at Harvard University has created a number of variations of the test for use in specific groups—the Child IAT uses sounds and images rather than words so that those as young as four can take the test, and the Brief IAT (BIAT) uses fewer tasks and repetitions to make the test quicker.

Bibliography

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