Measuring Individual Differences in Implicit
Cognition:
The Implicit Association Test
Anthony G. Greenwald, Debbie E. McGhee, and Jordan
L. K. Schwartz
JPSP, 1998
Basic Method:
 You have 3 training blocks, and 2 critical
blocks of trials:
 1)Congruent block (if you are a
Democrat)where you press one button for
a GOOD evaluation and a certain
personality attribute, like Democrat. You
press another button for a BAD evaluation
and another attribute, Republican.
 2)Incongruent block in which GOOD goes
with Republican and BAD with Democrat.
The Key Measurement: RT
 You are expected to be faster on
congruent block because you must pause
to equate GOOD with Republican…
 Of course, if you are a Republican, the
meanings of congruent and incongruent
are reversed.
 This test should reveal your true attitudes,
and there is a great deal of support.
 Go to paper to show results.
This was extended into a
lie detector…
 How to Accurately Detect
 Autobiographical Events
 Giuseppe Sartori,1 Sara Agosta,1 Cristina Zogmaister,2
Santo Davide Ferrara,3 and Umberto Castiello1
 1Psychology Department, 2Developmental and Social
Psychology Department, and 3Environmental
Medicine and Public
 Health Department, University of Padua
 Psychological Science 2008
Go to Sartori paper for
 Methods, results
Verschuere et al. show
that test is beatable…
 …by learning to increase RT to
congruent associations—slowing
down.
 Agosta & Sartori come back and
say “we can catch you doing this.”
 So we got into the act: Hu,
Rosenfeld & Bodenhausen : Psych
Science, in press. Trained Ps to
speed up incongruent trials:
Figure 1: