Implicit Association Test as an Analogical Learning Task

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a popular tool for measuring attitudes. We suggest that performing an IAT could, however, also change attitudes via analogical learning. For instance, when performing an IAT in which participants categorize (previously unknown) Chinese characters, flowers, posi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inExperimental psychology Vol. 65; no. 5; p. 272
Main Authors Hussey, Ian, De Houwer, Jan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Germany 01.09.2018
Subjects
Association Learning
Attitude
Female
Humans
Language
Male
Psychomotor Performance
Reaction Time
Word Association Tests
Young Adult
Implicit Association Test
analogy
learning
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Summary:The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a popular tool for measuring attitudes. We suggest that performing an IAT could, however, also change attitudes via analogical learning. For instance, when performing an IAT in which participants categorize (previously unknown) Chinese characters, flowers, positive words, and negative words, participants could infer that Chinese characters relate to flowers as negative words relate to positive words. This analogy would imply that Chinese characters are opposite to flowers in terms of valence and thus that they are negative. Results from three studies (N = 602) confirmed that evaluative learning can occur when completing an IAT, and suggest that this effect can be described as analogical. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on analogy and research on the IAT as a measure of attitudes.
ISSN:2190-5142
DOI:10.1027/1618-3169/a000416