As a psychology major, you will inevitably notice that Mr. Sigmund Freud managed to got himself into almost every undergraduate psychology class. I believe one of the reasons is that his concepts are so interesting (besides their pervy nature), enigmatic and applicable to everyday life. One of his many concepts that fascinates me is the mysterious realm of unconsciousness, which of course, is a concept that is also endorsed by many modern psychologists.
As an attempt to delve into the unconscious mind and to measure its contents, many implicit tests have been developed, such as the Rorschach inkblot test, Thematic Apperception Test, House-tree-person test, Word association test or other projective testings. Unlike objective self-report measures, they are free from faking good, faking bad (aka malingering), social desirability biases or dissimulation. The downfall is they are also susceptible to subjective scoring and questionable validity. However, one type of implicit testing — The Implicit Association Test (IAT), has shown some promising criterion validity (especially for predicting black-white interracial behavior), incremental validity (Greenwald et al., 2009), discriminant and convergent validity (Gawronski, 2002).
The IAT is used to measure a person’s automatic and unconscious cognitive processes. For example, a trial might require the subject to categorize as fast as possible, the word “happiness” into the category of either “me” or “not me”. Hence, if I am a depressed person, I would be faster to associate happiness with the “not me” category. On one hand, since you don’t have time to think about your responses, this kind of testing can avoid the disadvantages of objective testing (e.g. a depressed person might be reluctant to endorse the item “I often feel depressed”). On the other kind, unlike the other implicit measures, IAT avoids using subjective scoring, since reaction time is a more objective way to quantify implicit attitudes or a person’s standing on different constructs.
The IAT have been used to measure psychological constructs like anxiety (Egloff & Schmukle, 2002), self-esteem and self-concept (Greenwald & Famham, 2000), consumer attitudes and behaviors (Maison & Greenwald, 2004), depression (Gemar et al., 2001), etc. The IAT definitely provided a novel way to tap into the unconscious mind beyond what Mr. Freud would have imagined.
Wanna try out an IAT yourself? Here’s a link!
Egloff, B., & Schmukle, S. C. (2002). Predictive validity of an Implicit Association Test for assessing anxiety. Journal of personality and social psychology, 83(6), 1441.
Greenwald, A. G., & Farnham, S. D. (2000). Using the implicit association test to measure self-esteem and self-concept. Journal of personality and social psychology, 79(6), 1022.
Maison, D., Greenwald, A. G., & Bruin, R. H. (2004). Predictive validity of the Implicit Association Test in studies of brands, consumer attitudes, and behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 14(4), 405-415.
Gemar, M. C., Segal, Z. V., Sagrati, S., & Kennedy, S. J. (2001). Mood-induced changes on the Implicit Association Test in recovered depressed patients. Journal of abnormal psychology, 110(2), 282.
Gawronski, B. (2002). What does the Implicit Association Test measure? A test of the convergent and discriminant validity of prejudice-related IATs.Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie),49(3), 171-180.
Greenwald, A. G., Poehlman, T. A., Uhlmann, E. L., & Banaji, M. R. (2009). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: III. Meta-analysis of predictive validity. Journal of personality and social psychology, 97(1), 17.
