Question

write up one paragraph that describes how implicit association test (IAT) measures implicit attitudes. In other words, what is the logic behind the IAT? How does it conclude that people have a preference for one group over another? How does does the concept work? Do not copy the explanation word for word from IAT describe how the IAT works in own words.

Answer 1

Determining whether an individual feels prejudiced against another’s highly challenging. Not only do people have a tendency to mask their thoughts and feelings, they may not even be aware what they are. In this regard, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) is used to measure attitudes and beliefs that individuals possess but may be unwilling or unable to report. In this test, participants are typically shown images of individuals from different groups and two lists of words, one with positive associations and the other with negative associations. The images and words are randomly presented to the participants and their response time is recorded.

The underlying assumption of the test is that participants subconsciously link certain groups of people and words depending on their prejudices. This can be measured through their response time. When participants are asked to make the link between a pair that goes against our implicit associations (for example "male” and "affectionate") it will take them fractionally longer to overcome our bias. The longer the time it takes to accept a pairing, the greater is their bias.