Rolf Degen summarizing: Yet more evidence that the Implicit Association Test, though to be a neutral test instrument, changes the attitudes it is intended to assess, possibly making the cure worse than the disease

Implicit Association Test as an Analogical Learning Task. Ian Hussey and Jan De Houwer. Experimental Psychology (2018), 65, pp. 272-285. https://doi.org/10.1027/1618-3169/a000416

Abstract. 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.

Keywords: Implicit Association Test, analogy, learning