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Because indirect measures of personality self‐concepts such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT) allow tapping into automatic processes, they can offer advantages over self‐report measures. However, prior investigations have led to mixed results regarding the validity of indirect measures of conscientiousness. We suggest that these results might be due to a failure to consider the different facets of conscientiousness. These facets are of crucial importance because they are associated differentially with other psychobiological constructs and they are also characterized by different mechanisms. Therefore, focusing on facets while developing indirect measures of conscientiousness may improve the validity of such measures. In Study 1, we conducted a psycholexical investigation to develop one IAT for each conscientiousness facet. In Study 2, we examined the convergent and discriminant validities of each facet IAT in relation to self‐report measures, peer‐report measures and self‐report behavioural indicators, and we investigated differential associations of the conscientiousness facets with working memory capacity and self‐control. We employed network analysis as a novel approach to elucidate differential relationships involving personality facets. The results corroborated the convergent and discriminant validity of the conscientiousness facet IATs with self‐reports and showed that the conscientiousness facets were differentially associated with working memory capacity and with self‐control. Copyright © 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology

Word counts: 5040Implicit Food Preference -2 -The IAT as a predictor of food choice: The case of fruits versus snacks Abstract One of the issues concerning the application of implicit measures like the IAT is whether they can be successfully applied to consumer choices. Four studies (N=399) tested the predictive and incremental validity of an IAT of attitudes towards fruits versus snacks on the choice of a fruit or a snack at the end of the experimental session. Specifically, additive and interactive patterns to predict behavioral preference towards snacks or fruits were tested.The results showed that the IAT has both predictive and incremental validity and supported the additive pattern (i.e., both implicit and explicit measures independently predicted the behavioral preference for fruits versus snacks).Implicit Food Preference -3 -Since its introduction by Greenwald, McGhee and Schwartz (1998), the Implicit Association Test has been the most frequently used measure for assessing implicit attitudes.The IAT is a computerized paradigm that measures indirectly the strength of the association between pairs of concepts (e.g., two target categories: fruits and snacks; two attribute categories: positive and negative) via a classification task. The IAT score is computed by subtracting the average response time of the two versions of the combined classification task (i.e., two pairings of target-attribute: fruits-positive and fruits-negative) in which stimuli from all categories are randomly presented. The assumption underlying the IAT is that if two concepts are highly associated (e.g., fruits and positive), the classification task will be easier (and the participants quicker to respond) when the associated concepts share the same response key than when they require a different response key (for a more detailed description, see Greenwald et al., 1998). Theoretically based on an associative network conceptualization of a Social Knowledge Structure in memory (see Greenwald, Banaji, Rudman, Farnham, Nosek, & Mellot, 2002) and on the conceptualization of an attitude as the association between an attitude-object and a valence concept (Fazio, 1995), the IAT is assumed to reflect the relative strength of automatic associations between concepts. The IAT has been used as an implicit measure of attitudes, self-concepts, and stereotypes (for reviews, see Greenwald & Nosek, 2001; Hofmann, Gawronski, Gschwender, Lee, & Schmitt, 2005;Poehlman, Uhlmann, Greenwald, & Banaji, 2006). Numerous studies have shown the reliability of the IAT in various domains, with values generally hovering around .80 for the internal consistency and .60 for test-retest stability (e.g., Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001;Greenwald & Farnham, 2000;Greenwald & Nosek, 2001;Perugini, 2005a).Predictive validity.One of the key issues concerning the IAT is its ability to predict relevant behaviors. In fact, one could argue that, both on practical and theoretical grounds, an acid test for a measure Implicit Food Preference -4 -such as the IAT is whether it shows evidence ...

This study examines the extent to which implicit measures of aggressiveness predict actual aggressive behavior in response to provocation. Participants (n = 77) completed implicit measures of aggressiveness, were or were not exposed to insult from an experimenter, evaluated the performance of the experimenter (i.e., opportunity for aggressive behavior), and completed explicit measures of aggressiveness. Results showed that the implicit measure of aggressiveness significantly predicted aggressive behavior in response to provocation, whereas it was not predictive when there was no provocation. The discussion deals with the validity of implicit measures as predictors of aggressive behavior and their moderators.

We argue that the series of traits characterizing Borderline Personality Disorder samples do not weigh equally. In this regard, we believe that network approaches employed recently in Personality and Psychopathology research to provide information about the differential relationships among symptoms would be useful to test our claim. To our knowledge, this approach has never been applied to personality disorders. We applied network analysis to the nine Borderline Personality Disorder traits to explore their relationships in two samples drawn from university students and clinical populations (N = 1317 and N = 96, respectively). We used the Fused Graphical Lasso, a technique that allows estimating networks from different populations separately while considering their similarities and differences. Moreover, we examined centrality indices to determine the relative importance of each symptom in each network. The general structure of the two networks was very similar in the two samples, although some differences were detected. Results indicate the centrality of mainly affective instability, identity, and effort to avoid abandonment aspects in Borderline Personality Disorder. Results are consistent with the new DSM Alternative Model for Personality Disorders. We discuss them in terms of implications for therapy.

Implicit attitudes are automatic evaluations that occur upon encountering an object. Pairing a particular object with one's self should lead to a positive implicit evaluation of that object as, on the whole, people evaluate themselves positively. Study 1 (N ¼ 83) demonstrated that asking participants to associate themselves with a particular drink (A) and others with an alternative drink (B) was enough to enhance implicit preference for drink A over drink B indexed by scores on the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Two further studies were conducted to rule out the possibility that the effects of the manipulation were restricted to the procedure and measures adopted in Study 1. Study 2 (N ¼ 81) tested the mechanism underlying the effects of the manipulation. The results suggested that the change in implicit attitudes towards the drinks varied as a function of the level of one's self-esteem. Specifically, associating one's self with drink A led to more favourable implicit attitudes towards drink A particularly when one's self was evaluated more positively. In the third study (N ¼ 44), the basic effect of the manipulation was replicated in an alternative measure of implicit attitudes (the Affect Misattribution Procedure). In all three studies, the effects were unique to implicit measures and did not generalize to explicit measures.

Since the development of D scores for the Implicit Association Test, few studies have examined whether there is a better scoring method. In this contribution, we tested the effect of four relevant parameters for IAT data that are the treatment of extreme latencies, the error treatment, the method for computing the IAT difference, and the distinction between practice and test critical trials. For some options of these different parameters, we included robust statistic methods that can provide viable alternative metrics to existing scoring algorithms, especially given the specificity of reaction time data. We thus elaborated 420 algorithms that result from the combination of all the different options and test the main effect of the four parameters with robust statistical analyses as well as their interaction with the type of IAT (i.e., with or without built-in penalty included in the IAT procedure). From the results, we can elaborate some recommendations. A treatment of extreme latencies is preferable but only if it consists in replacing rather than eliminating them. Errors contain important information and should not be discarded. The D score seems to be still a good way to compute the difference although the G score could be a good alternative, and finally it seems better to not compute the IAT difference separately for practice and test critical trials. From this recommendation, we propose to improve the traditional D scores with small yet effective modifications.

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