Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure and Body-Weight Bias: Influence of Gender of Participants and Targets

Nolan, Jason; Murphy, Carol; Barnes‐Holmes, Dermot

doi:10.11133/j.tpr.2013.63.3.005

Cited by 12 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This general tendency is stronger for women highly dissatisfied with their bodies. This pattern of results indicating stronger explicit than implicit weight bias is similar to that found in Maroto-Expósito et al (2015), but uncommon in the literature on body-size attitudes, where stronger bias is usually found for implicit than for explicit attitudes (Teachman et al, 2003; Roddy et al, 2010, 2011; Nolan et al, 2013). In our view, this discrepancy in the findings may be related to the fact that only the Maroto-Expósito et al study and this one have employed as an explicit measure a VAS for the same target images presented in the IRAP.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…These findings reveal that self-reported levels of BD are clearly associated with implicit body-image attitudes toward other females’ body shape as measured by the IRAP. Given that previous studies (Roddy et al, 2010, 2011; Nolan et al, 2013) on the topic did not collect information on participants’ levels of BD, it is difficult to elucidate whether inconsistent findings across studies (cf. Roddy et al, 2010; Maroto-Expósito et al, 2015) are attributable to differences in BD across samples from different cultural contexts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…So far, no study conducted with the IRAP has reported clear evidence of anti-fat implicit attitudes, either when assessing other-related (Roddy et al, 2010, 2011; Nolan et al, 2013; Maroto-Expósito et al, 2015) or self-related attitudes (Parling et al, 2012; Ritzert et al, 2016). Different studies conducted with Irish female and male participants have found clear positive attitudes to average-weight pictures and neutral attitudes to overweight pictures (e.g., Roddy et al, 2010, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Implicit Attitudes to Female Body Shape in Spanish Women With High and Low Body Dissatisfaction

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Research on implicit attitudes to body image has grown substantially in recent years. The extant evidence reveals an implicit weight bias in the general population that has generally been interpreted in terms of anti-fat attitudes. However, research with the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) shows that this bias appears to be driven by pro-slim rather than anti-fat implicit attitudes. Besides, the only IRAP study of this sort conducted in Spain found no evidence of such implicit weight bias (with similarly positive attitudes to thinness and fatness). Given the existing differences in body dissatisfaction (BD) among diverse cultural contexts, we predicted that discrepancies in findings about implicit weight bias might be related to differences in BD amongst the samples in the different studies. This study explores whether women with extreme scores in BD (High vs. Low) show different patterns of attitudes to female body shape. Spanish female college students with extreme scores in the Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ: high ≥ 104, percentile 80; low ≤ 52, percentile 20) completed an IRAP with pictures of overweight and underweight women as target stimuli and the words pleasant and unpleasant as labels. Participants also completed explicit ratings to the same stimuli and clinically relevant measures of body image related distress. Results showed an implicit weight bias only for women high in BD. While both groups showed equally positive implicit attitudes to thinness, only women with low BD showed implicit positive attitudes to fatness (and hence no bias). In turn, both groups presented a clear pro-thin/anti-fat explicit bias with positive ratings for underweight pictures and negative ratings for overweight pictures. The latter were stronger for the high BD group. Therefore, between-group differences were mainly driven by differences in attitudes to fatness (both implicit and explicit). Both implicit and explicit attitudes to fatness independently predicted eating disorders symptoms and other clinically relevant measures. These results are discussed in terms of their clinical implications.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Implicit Attitudes to Female Body Shape in Spanish Women With High and Low Body Dissatisfaction

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, Roddy et al (2011Roddy et al ( , 2012; see also Nolan, Murphy, & Barnes-Holmes 2013) reported that what was driving the pro-thin/anti-fat bias in the IAT was an extremely strong pro-thin bias with participants having a neutral implicit attitude towards fat people.…”

Section: Flaws In the Irapmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Stimuli for the nature IRAP were chosen from past implicit research (e.g., Greenwald et al, 1998). The 12 images for the weight IRAP were taken from Nolan et al (2013) and consisted of three pictures of women and three pictures of men, before and after they had lost a significant amount of weight. These images were controlled on a number of dimensions (e.g., picture angle, cropping, clothing and background).…”

Section: Apparatus and Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring implicit attitudes: A positive framing bias flaw in the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP).

O’Shea

Watson

Brown

2016

Psychological Assessment

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How can implicit attitudes best be measured? The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP), unlike the Implicit Association Test (IAT), claims to measure absolute, not just relative, implicit attitudes. In the IRAP, participants make congruent (Fat Person-Active:False; Fat Person-Unhealthy: True) or incongruent (Fat Person-Active: True; Fat PersonUnhealthy: False) responses in different blocks of trials. IRAP experiments have reported positive or neutral implicit attitudes (e.g., neutral attitudes towards fat people) in cases where negative attitudes are normally found on explicit or other implicit measures. It was hypothesized that these results might reflect a Positive Framing Bias (PFB) that occurs when participants complete the IRAP. Implicit attitudes towards categories with varying prior associations (nonwords, social systems, flowers and insects, thin and fat people) were measured. Three conditions (standard, positive framing, and negative framing) were used to measure whether framing influenced estimates of implicit attitudes. It was found that IRAP scores were influenced by how the task was framed to the participants, that the framing effect was modulated by the strength of prior stimulus associations and that a default PFB led to an overestimation of positive implicit attitudes when measured by the IRAP. Overall, the findings question the validity of the IRAP as a tool for the measurement of absolute implicit attitudes. A new tool (Simple Implicit Procedure: SIP) for measuring absolute, not just relative, implicit attitudes is proposed. Implicit attitudes are automatic evaluations that occur outside conscious awareness and are measured without requiring respondents to introspect on their feelings. Explicit attitudes in contrast are the result of deliberate introspection and controlled evaluative judgment (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). One reason for measuring implicit attitudes is that participants may use self-presentation tactics or respond in a socially desirable manner on explicit self-reports to avoid being perceived as prejudiced. Implicit measures can also be useful in areas where participants might be unwilling to reveal personal psychological attributes or are unaware of these psychological attributes (for a review of implicit attitudes and the tools used to measure them see Gawronski & De Houwer, 2014).The current gold standard method for assessing implicit attitudes is the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) and this tool has been increasingly used in clinically relevant areas (see https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/pimh/).The IAT has shown promise in predicting self-harm (Randall, Rowe, Dong, Nock, & Colman 2013), social anxiety disorders (Teachman & Allen, 2007) and suicidal ideation (Harrison, Stritzke, Fay, Ellison, & Hudaib, 2014). The current study questions the validity of a recently developed implicit measure, the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP; BarnesHolmes, Barnes-Holmes, Stewart, & Boles, 2010a), which has also been u...

show abstract

Are explicit and implicit affective attitudes toward different body shape categories related to the own body-satisfaction in young women? The role of mindfulness, self-compassion and social media activity

Jansen

Schroter

Hofmann

2021

Psychological Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Implicit and explicit attitudes influence our behavior. Accordingly, it was the main goal of the paper to investigate if those attitudes are related to body image satisfaction. 134 young women between 18 and 34 years completed an explicit affective rating and an implicit affective priming task with pictures of women with different BMIs. Because it is well known that mindfulness, self-compassion and social media activity influence body image satisfaction, these variables were registered as well. The results confirmed an explicit positive affective bias toward pictures of slim women and a negative bias toward emaciated and obese body pictures. It adds to the literature that the explicit positive bias does not hold true for the strongest form of underweight, suggesting that instead of dividing different body shapes into two groups, different gradings of under- and overweight should be considered. Concerning the affective priming task, no significant differences between the different pictures could be carved out. Implicit and explicit affective attitudes were not related to the body satisfaction of the participating women. In line with former studies, body satisfaction was predicted by the actual-ideal weight discrepancy, the BMI, aspects of mindfulness and self-compassion. This study indicates that implicit and explicit affective attitudes toward underweight and overweight women are unrelated to the participants’ body satisfaction.

show abstract

Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure and Body-Weight Bias: Influence of Gender of Participants and Targets

Cited by 12 publications

References 27 publications

Implicit Attitudes to Female Body Shape in Spanish Women With High and Low Body Dissatisfaction

Implicit Attitudes to Female Body Shape in Spanish Women With High and Low Body Dissatisfaction

Measuring implicit attitudes: A positive framing bias flaw in the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP).

Are explicit and implicit affective attitudes toward different body shape categories related to the own body-satisfaction in young women? The role of mindfulness, self-compassion and social media activity

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About