Relations between implicit measures of prejudice:what are we measuring?

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Attitude Measurement

Background:

• Conflicting findings exist on whether implicit prejudice measures assess a single underlying construct.
• Understanding the conditions under which different implicit measures correspond is crucial for accurate attitude assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the correspondence between a priming measure of racial attitudes and the Implicit Association Test (IAT).
• To examine the effect of explicitly encouraging racial categorization on implicit prejudice.

Main Methods:

• White participants completed a racial attitude priming task, with conditions varying in whether face primes were explicitly categorized by race.
• Participants then completed the Implicit Association Test (IAT).

Main Results:

• Correspondence between the priming measure and the IAT was observed only when participants were instructed to categorize primes by race.
• Participants exhibited higher levels of implicit prejudice when racial categorization was encouraged.

Conclusions:

• The alignment of implicit prejudice measures depends on task instructions, specifically the encouragement of social categorization.
• Findings suggest potential dissociations between evaluations of social categories and evaluations of individual category members.