Abstract
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a popular means of examining “hidden” biases. However, some express concerns about classroom use of the IAT, citing students' potentially negative affective reactions to taking the IAT and discovering their implicit biases. To investigate the validity of this criticism, 35 social psychology students completed affect measures after taking and discussing the Race IAT. Students reported more positive than negative affect both immediately after taking the IAT and 1 week later. They also reported greater awareness of their own and others' implicit racial biases, knowledge of implicit processes, and perceived value of the IAT demonstration.
Notes
1Blanton and Jaccard's (2006a, 2006b) criticisms of the IAT also include concerns that the feedback is based on what they consider to be an “arbitrary metric” and thus inaccurate. However, this and other criticisms go well beyond the scope of this article and have been discussed in other forums (see CitationBlanton, Jaccard, Christie, & Gonzales, 2007; CitationNosek & Sriram, 2007).
2To determine whether students from the two universities differed in their responses in this research, we conducted a series of independent-sample t tests for each dependent measure reported. None of these results yielded a significant difference, suggesting that students from the two universities had equivalent knowledge and attitudes regarding the IAT. This finding is noteworthy, considering that the two universities draw from very different student populations.
* p < .01.
** p < .001, for comparisons within rows.