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Predicting Behavior With Implicit Measures: Disillusioning Findings, Reasonable Explanations, and Sophisticated Solutions

Two decades ago, the introduction of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) sparked enthusiastic reactions. With implicit measures like the IAT, researchers hoped to finally be able to bridge the gap between self-reported attitudes on one hand and behavior on the other. Twenty years of research and sev...

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Autores principales: Meissner, Franziska, Grigutsch, Laura Anne, Koranyi, Nicolas, Müller, Florian, Rothermund, Klaus
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6856205/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31787912
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02483
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author Meissner, Franziska
Grigutsch, Laura Anne
Koranyi, Nicolas
Müller, Florian
Rothermund, Klaus
author_facet Meissner, Franziska
Grigutsch, Laura Anne
Koranyi, Nicolas
Müller, Florian
Rothermund, Klaus
author_sort Meissner, Franziska
collection PubMed
description Two decades ago, the introduction of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) sparked enthusiastic reactions. With implicit measures like the IAT, researchers hoped to finally be able to bridge the gap between self-reported attitudes on one hand and behavior on the other. Twenty years of research and several meta-analyses later, however, we have to conclude that neither the IAT nor its derivatives have fulfilled these expectations. Their predictive value for behavioral criteria is weak and their incremental validity over and above self-report measures is negligible. In our review, we present an overview of explanations for these unsatisfactory findings and delineate promising ways forward. Over the years, several reasons for the IAT’s weak predictive validity have been proposed. They point to four potentially problematic features: First, the IAT is by no means a pure measure of individual differences in associations but suffers from extraneous influences like recoding. Hence, the predictive validity of IAT-scores should not be confused with the predictive validity of associations. Second, with the IAT, we usually aim to measure evaluation (“liking”) instead of motivation (“wanting”). Yet, behavior might be determined much more often by the latter than the former. Third, the IAT focuses on measuring associations instead of propositional beliefs and thus taps into a construct that might be too unspecific to account for behavior. Finally, studies on predictive validity are often characterized by a mismatch between predictor and criterion (e.g., while behavior is highly context-specific, the IAT usually takes into account neither the situation nor the domain). Recent research, however, also revealed advances addressing each of these problems, namely (1) procedural and analytical advances to control for recoding in the IAT, (2) measurement procedures to assess implicit wanting, (3) measurement procedures to assess implicit beliefs, and (4) approaches to increase the fit between implicit measures and behavioral criteria (e.g., by incorporating contextual information). Implicit measures like the IAT hold an enormous potential. In order to allow them to fulfill this potential, however, we have to refine our understanding of these measures, and we should incorporate recent conceptual and methodological advancements. This review provides specific recommendations on how to do so.
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spelling pubmed-68562052019-11-29 Predicting Behavior With Implicit Measures: Disillusioning Findings, Reasonable Explanations, and Sophisticated Solutions Meissner, Franziska Grigutsch, Laura Anne Koranyi, Nicolas Müller, Florian Rothermund, Klaus Front Psychol Psychology Two decades ago, the introduction of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) sparked enthusiastic reactions. With implicit measures like the IAT, researchers hoped to finally be able to bridge the gap between self-reported attitudes on one hand and behavior on the other. Twenty years of research and several meta-analyses later, however, we have to conclude that neither the IAT nor its derivatives have fulfilled these expectations. Their predictive value for behavioral criteria is weak and their incremental validity over and above self-report measures is negligible. In our review, we present an overview of explanations for these unsatisfactory findings and delineate promising ways forward. Over the years, several reasons for the IAT’s weak predictive validity have been proposed. They point to four potentially problematic features: First, the IAT is by no means a pure measure of individual differences in associations but suffers from extraneous influences like recoding. Hence, the predictive validity of IAT-scores should not be confused with the predictive validity of associations. Second, with the IAT, we usually aim to measure evaluation (“liking”) instead of motivation (“wanting”). Yet, behavior might be determined much more often by the latter than the former. Third, the IAT focuses on measuring associations instead of propositional beliefs and thus taps into a construct that might be too unspecific to account for behavior. Finally, studies on predictive validity are often characterized by a mismatch between predictor and criterion (e.g., while behavior is highly context-specific, the IAT usually takes into account neither the situation nor the domain). Recent research, however, also revealed advances addressing each of these problems, namely (1) procedural and analytical advances to control for recoding in the IAT, (2) measurement procedures to assess implicit wanting, (3) measurement procedures to assess implicit beliefs, and (4) approaches to increase the fit between implicit measures and behavioral criteria (e.g., by incorporating contextual information). Implicit measures like the IAT hold an enormous potential. In order to allow them to fulfill this potential, however, we have to refine our understanding of these measures, and we should incorporate recent conceptual and methodological advancements. This review provides specific recommendations on how to do so. Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-11-08 /pmc/articles/PMC6856205/ /pubmed/31787912 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02483 Text en Copyright © 2019 Meissner, Grigutsch, Koranyi, Müller and Rothermund. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Meissner, Franziska
Grigutsch, Laura Anne
Koranyi, Nicolas
Müller, Florian
Rothermund, Klaus
Predicting Behavior With Implicit Measures: Disillusioning Findings, Reasonable Explanations, and Sophisticated Solutions
title Predicting Behavior With Implicit Measures: Disillusioning Findings, Reasonable Explanations, and Sophisticated Solutions
title_full Predicting Behavior With Implicit Measures: Disillusioning Findings, Reasonable Explanations, and Sophisticated Solutions
title_fullStr Predicting Behavior With Implicit Measures: Disillusioning Findings, Reasonable Explanations, and Sophisticated Solutions
title_full_unstemmed Predicting Behavior With Implicit Measures: Disillusioning Findings, Reasonable Explanations, and Sophisticated Solutions
title_short Predicting Behavior With Implicit Measures: Disillusioning Findings, Reasonable Explanations, and Sophisticated Solutions
title_sort predicting behavior with implicit measures: disillusioning findings, reasonable explanations, and sophisticated solutions
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6856205/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31787912
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02483
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