The Implicit Association Test. The IAT measures attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report. The IAT may be especially interesting if it reveals an implicit attitude that you were previously unaware of. For example, you may believe that women and men should be equally associated with science, but your automatic associations could show that you (like many others) associate men with science more than you associate women with science.
In other words, the IAT measures the strength of associations between concepts (e.g., black people, gay people) and evaluations (e.g., good, bad) or stereotypes (e.g., athletic, clumsy). The main idea is that making a response is easier when closely related items share the same response key.
When doing an IAT, you are asked to quickly sort words into categories that are on the left and right-hand side of the computer screen by pressing the “e” key if the word belongs to the category on the left and the “i” key if the word belongs to the category on the right. The IAT has five main parts.
Sort words relating to the concepts (e.g., fat people, thin people) into categories. So if the category “Fat People” was on the left, and a picture of a heavy person appeared on the screen, you would press the “e” key.
Sort words relating to the evaluation (e.g., good, bad). So if the category “good” was on the left, and a pleasant word appeared on the screen, you would press the “e” key.
The categories are combined, and you are asked to sort both concept and evaluation words. So the categories on the left-hand side would be Fat People/Good, and the categories on the right-hand side would be Thin People/Bad. It is essential to note that the order in which the blocks are presented varies across participants, so some individuals will complete the Fat People/Good, Thin People/Bad part first, while others will complete the Fat People/Bad, Thin People/Good part first.
The placement of the concepts switches. If the category “Fat People” was previously on the left, now it would be on the right. Importantly, the number of trials in this part of the IAT is increased in order to minimize the effects of practice
The categories are combined in a way that is opposite to what they were before. If the category on the left was previously Fat People/Good, it would now be Fat People/Bad.
You can select a test that interests you and compare it with the general results included here.
You must be 18+ to partake in the IAT