What Makes Mental Associations Personal or Extra‐Personal? Conceptual Issues in the Methodological Debate about Implicit Attitude Measures

Abstract

Over the last decade, a new class of indirect measurement procedures has become increasingly popular in many areas of psychology. However, these implicit measures have also sparked controversies about the nature of the constructs they assess. One controversy has been stimulated by the question of whether some implicit measures (or implicit measures in general) assess extra‐personal rather than personal associations. We argue that, despite empirical and methodological advances stimulated by this debate, researchers have not sufficiently addressed the conceptual question of how to define extra‐personal in contrast to personal associations. Based on a review of possible definitions, we argue that some definitions render the controversy obsolete, whereas others imply fundamentally different empirical and methodological questions. As an alternative to defining personal and extra‐personal associations in an objective sense, we suggest an empirical approach that investigates the meta‐cognitive inferences that make a given association subjectively personal or extra‐personal for the individual.

Blind spots in the search for happiness: Implicit attitudes and nonverbal leakage predict affective forecasting errors

“…That is, we found that forecasting errors were predicted by nonconscious evaluations both when we assessed this construct with the IAT in a lab setting (Study 1) and with participants' nonverbal behaviors outside of the lab (Study 2). Although converging evidence is always valuable, it is particularly worthwhile here to assuage concerns that may exist with the use of any particular measure of nonconscious evaluations, which continue to be controversial (Gawronski et al, 2008;McConnell & Leibold, 2009;Olson & Fazio, 2004;Nosek & Hansen, 2008).…”

“…Analyses were conducted on the log-transformed values, but the data are reported in ms. intrusive attitudes measures. For instance, in Study 1 we chose to assess implicit attitudes with the personalized IAT, however any particular choice of attitude measure (explicit or implicit) can be contentious and subject to debate (e.g., Gawronski, Peters, & LeBel, 2008;Karpinski & Hilton, 2001;McConnell & Leibold, 2009;Olson & Fazio, 2004;Nosek & Hansen, 2008). Moreover, explicit attitude measures in general are subject to self-presentational concerns, which can cloud their interpretation (Fazio & Olson, 2003).…”

Do Theories of Implicit Race Bias Change Moral Judgments?

“…True self is taken to reflect a person's core attitudes that have been solidified through prior acts of endorsement and identification (Sripada, 2009). Social psychology researchers have also debated whether implicit biases are ''personally endorsed'' and reflective of a person's true self (Arkes & Tetlock, 2004;Gawronski, Peters, & Lebel, 2008;Nosek & Hansen, 2008). For true self to mediate the moral responsibility findings, people would have had to perceive that discrimination resulting from unconscious bias is less reflective of an agent's true self.…”

Perspective taking combats automatic expressions of racial bias.

“…Because there are controversies surrounding which IAT is optimal for assessing automatic evaluations (e.g., Gawronski, Peters, & LeBel, 2008;Han, Czellar, Olson, & Fazio, 2010;Han, Olson, & Fazio, 2006;Nosek & Hansen, 2008a, 2008bOlson & Fazio, 2004;Olson, Fazio, & Han, 2009), Experiment 3 utilized the standard IAT to extend the findings from Experiments 1 and 2. Although we expected the effects of perspective taking on the two IAT variants to be comparable, it is ultimately an empirical question.…”