The online-VAAST: A short and online tool to measure spontaneous approach and avoidance tendencies

In Masks we Trust: Explicit and Implicit Reactions to Masked Faces Vary by Political Orientation

“…These positive reactions to masks were mirrored in the implicit reaction time scores, which showed that people were faster to approach masked faces than unmasked faces, and faster to approach than avoid masked faces (but not unmasked faces). The coherence of these implicit results from the online-VAAST approach/avoid task (Aubé et al, 2019) with those from the more explicit methods support the external validity of the former measure, and suggest that in some research contexts it could be a useful alternative to better-known implicit measures such as the IAT (Implicit Association Test), which has been much criticized lately (Jost, 2019;Schimmack, 2019;Villacampa, Ingram, Corradi, & Olivera-LaRosa, 2019). In terms of both explicit judgements and approach reaction times (but not avoidance reaction times), conservative voters were notably less favorable towards masked faces than liberal voters were, reflecting both continuing controversy over the use of masks in public, and the potential for political orientation to affect one's judgments of strangers, depending on the symbols of affiliation that they display (Hester & Gray, 2020).…”

“…Another is that the social norm generated a kind of social desirability bias that caused people to say they would want less social distance from the masked targets, but that this explicit judgement would not necessarily be reflected in their behavior. Hence, we investigated whether a more implicit, quasi-behavioral instrument (the online-VAAST approach/avoidance task; Aubé, Rougier, Muller, Ric, & Yzerbyt, 2019) would show a pattern of results more similar to the explicit results for trustworthiness and desired social distance (quicker approach to masked faces than unmasked ones), or the explicit results for sickness perception (quicker avoidance of masked faces than unmasked ones):…”

“…We adapted the online Visual Approach/Avoidance by the Self Task (online-VAAST; Aubé et al, 2019). In this task, participants responded to targets as quickly as possible with a pseudobehavioral measure.…”

“…For the implicit task (H2), following Aubé et al (2019), we fitted four random-effects models (Figure 4 shows an overview of the differences found).…”

Toward the Use of Approach/Avoidance Tendencies as Attitude Measures: Individual- and Group-Level Variability of the Ingroup Bias

“…In this version, participants only had to press once the approach/avoidance key to categorize stimuli, simulating visually a short movement forward/backward in the environment. This one-key-press version of the VAAST has the advantage of diminishing the overall time of completion and, crucially, it is still able to produce large approach/avoidance effects in lab experiments (Rougier et al, 2018) as well as in online experiments (Aubé, Rougier, Muller, Ric, & Yzerbyt, 2019). Second, because the experiment was administered online and not in the lab, participants categorized the first names with their keyboard (instead of a button box).…”