Using the IAT: how do individuals respond to their results?

Abstract

Recently, implicit methods have been employed as a method to understand the underlying attitudes of the participant while also bypassing the social desirability biases that explicit measures are vulnerable to. Unfortunately, the literature has not considered the viewpoints of the individuals who participate in this process and the face validity they ascribe to the test’s results. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore how individuals respond to engaging in and receiving the results of an implicit test that addresses a sensitive topic and exploring the subsequent methodological implications. Specifically, we conduct a qualitative exploratory study of individuals’ reactions to their scores on the race-based implicit association test (IAT) using publically accessible comments from online message boards. Overall, we discuss four themes: the reporting of results, questioning IAT legitimacy, explicit racism/in-group behavior, and humor. Using a sensemaking theoretical framework, we discuss our findings and make recommendations for the future use of implicit tests.

Keywords:

• Implicit measures
• implicit association test
• attitudes
• racism
• qualitative

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.