ReviewPerspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science2021
The Implicit Association Test: A Method in Search of a Construct.
Review in Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 66 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
66 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Implicit racial bias among medical graduates and students by an IAT measure: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Irish journal of medical science · 2022Pooled it
- The use of virtual reality in studying prejudice and its reduction: A systematic review.PloS one · 2022Pooled it
- Teachers' Implicit Attitudes Toward Students From Different Social Groups: A Meta-Analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Pooled it
- Cathodal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Does Not Change Implicit Associations Against Alcohol in Alcohol Use Disorder: A Preregistered Clinical Trial.Addiction biology · 2025Trial
- The impact of alcohol consumption on implicit racial bias.Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors · 2024Trial
- Does Cognitive Bias Modification for Appraisals Change Symptom-Cognition Relations in PTSD? Preliminary Evidence from Network Analysis in a Randomized Controlled Trial.Clinical psychology & psychotherapyTrial
- A downside of conceptual metaphor: metaphoric alignments of black and white.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2026Article
- Charting the Scientific Landscape of Indirect Estimation Models in Doping Prevalence Research: A Bibliometric Analysis with Narrative Appraisal.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Challenging the mechanism for the implicit association test.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Hidden Dimensions in Clinical Ethics Consultation.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2026Article
- Culture and anthropomorphism towards robots in middle school students: evidence from human-robot interaction.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The 'Conceptual Distance Effect' in the Causal Effects Under Experimental Manipulation Between Attitude and Stereotype.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Exploring Gender and Age Differences in Explicit and Implicit Prejudice Toward Voice-Based Gender Nonconformity.Archives of sexual behavior · 2026Article
- Implicit association tests for all: Using iatgen for non-English and offline samples.PloS one · 2026Article
- Can avatar affective valence determine whether virtual reality embodiment reduces implicit workplace ageism?Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Racial Biases in Parent-Teacher Ratings of Childhood ADHD Symptoms: Roles of Implicit and Explicit Racial Attitudes and Stereotypes.Child psychiatry and human development · 2025Article
- The individual-level precision of implicit measures.Behavior research methods · 2025Article
- A latent measure of cultural racism and its association with US mortality and life expectancy.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Mental association of time and valence revealed with a novel chronometric approach: The positive-future effect.Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- Anxiety Symptom Severity and Implicit and Explicit Self-As-Anxious Associations in a Large Online Sample of U.S. Adults: Trends From 2011 to 2022.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Article
6 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In 1998, Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz proposed that the Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures individual differences in implicit social cognition. This claim requires evidence of construct validity. I review the evidence and show that there is insufficient evidence for this claim. Most important, I show that few studies were able to test discriminant validity of the IAT as a measure of implicit constructs. I examine discriminant validity in several multimethod studies and find little or no evidence of discriminant validity. I also show that validity of the IAT as a measure of attitudes varies across constructs. Validity of the self-esteem IAT is low, but estimates vary across studies. About 20% of the variance in the race IAT reflects racial preferences. The highest validity is obtained for measuring political orientation with the IAT (64%). Most of this valid variance stems from a distinction between individuals with opposing attitudes, whereas reaction times contribute less than 10% of variance in the prediction of explicit attitude measures. In all domains, explicit measures are more valid than the IAT, but the IAT can be used as a measure of sensitive attitudes to reduce measurement error by using a multimethod measurement model.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.