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Related Experiment Videos

Assessing implicit alcohol associations with the Implicit Association Test: fact or artifact?

Katrijn Houben1, Reinout W Wiers

  • 1Faculty of Psychology, Department of Experimental Psychology, Maastricht University, PO Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. K.Houben@psychology.unimaas.nl

Addictive Behaviors
|December 6, 2005
PubMed
Summary

Heavy drinkers show mixed implicit associations with alcohol, both positive and negative. Unipolar Implicit Association Tests (IATs) reveal these complex alcohol-related attitudes more accurately than bipolar versions.

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Area of Science:

  • Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Behavioral Science

Background:

  • Previous studies using bipolar Implicit Association Tests (IATs) indicated that heavy drinkers associate alcohol with negative valence and arousal.
  • The influence of specific labels ('alcohol') and contrast categories ('soda') on these associations remained unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether bipolar IAT results for alcohol associations are artifacts of category labels and contrast choices.
  • To assess implicit alcohol associations using unipolar IATs across different dimensions (valence, arousal, sedation).

Main Methods:

  • Four unipolar IATs were employed to measure associations between alcohol/beer and soda/animals.
  • Implicit associations with positive valence, negative valence, arousal, and sedation were assessed.

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  • Study 2 examined potential "figure-ground" asymmetries in IAT results.

    • Main Results:

    • Heavy drinkers exhibited strong implicit associations between alcohol and negative valence, with variation based on target categories.
    • Associations with positive valence, arousal, and sedation were also observed and were independent of target category composition.
    • "Figure-ground" asymmetries did not account for the observed IAT effects.

    Conclusions:

    • Implicit alcohol associations are complex, demonstrating ambivalence in both valence and arousal/sedation dimensions.
    • Unipolar IATs provide a more nuanced and valid assessment of implicit alcohol attitudes.
    • Implicit alcohol associations are not solely IAT artifacts and can be meaningfully measured.