this review focuses on race, the IAT has assessed an impressive variety of evaluative links between own group
and positive associations, but another group and negative ones ( Fazio & Olson, 2003 ): for example, gender, race,
age, religion, nationality ( Rudman, Greenwald, Mellott, & Schwartz, 1999 ), and even minimal, arbitrary group
memberships ( Ashburn-Nardo, Voils, & Monteith, 2001 ). All these IAT versions suggest that people like them-
selves, associate themselves with their ingroup, and favor ingroup accordingly. IAT research generally argues
that implicit associations /C0millisecond differences in speed of responding to evaluatively linked items /C0reveal
prejudice that may not be consciously accessible. Some controversy has ensued about whether to call the IAT a
measure of attitudes, hence the narrower name, ‘association,’ linked to its operationalization.
Description
The IAT requires participants to pair like-valenced and unlike-valenced concepts by responding to one type of
pair on a left-hand key and the other pair on a right-hand key, for example: implicitly pairing one concept (e.g.,
words denoting Black people) and one evaluation (e.g., unpleasant words, such as cancer) by responding with
the left-hand key, but pairing White-related words and positive words on the right (see below).
White people respond quickly to racial categories and race-unrelated words sharing a valence, when subjective
positives and negatives are on opposite sides (on one side, a mixed list of White or good words versus on the
other, Black or bad words); they are slow to respond to inconsistent categories sharing a side (White or bad on
one side versus Black or good on the other) ( Greenwald et al., 1998 ).
The initial race IAT ( Greenwald et al., 1998 , Study 3) asked one condition to pair 25 stereotypically White
American names (e.g., Adam, Chip, Harry ) or 25 positive words (e.g., caress, freedom, health ) on one side but 25 ste-
reotypically Black American names ( Alonzo, Jamel, Lerone ) or negative words ( abuse, crash, filth ) on the other. In
another condition, the valence-pairings reversed (White or bad; Black or good). Other versions used male and
female, Black or White names, and, for Asian participants, Korean and Japanese names. Participants responded
significantly faster to ethnic ingroup-positive and ethnic outgroup-negative pairings.
Sample
The original race IAT involved 26 University of Washington undergraduates. The IAT rapidly went beyond
student samples to a website and papers that analyzed literally millions of on-line responses ( Nosek, Banaji, &
Greenwald, 2002, 2007 ). Regarding race specifically, the web samples all paired more positive terms with White
than Black social-category-related stimuli. All racial/ethnic groups (Whites, Asian, Hispanics, native Americans,
multi-racials) except Blacks favored Whites implicitly; the effect for Blacks was neutral, neither racial ingroup nor
Whites being favored. Regardless of participant race, effect sizes favoring Whites were large (overall d5.77), a
pattern shown by 68% of all respondents, while only 14% showed Black favoritism. Among social category biases
tested by the IAT, only age showed bigger effects.
Reliability
Internal Consistency
Based on an overview across types of target categories that go beyond race ( Schnabel, Asendorpf, &
Greenwald, 2008 ), Cronbach alpha coefficients for the IAT have been reported ranging from .53 to .90
(Cunningham, Preacher, & Banaji, 2001; Hofmann, Gawronski, Gschwendner, Le, & Schmitt, 2005; Nosek,
Greenwald, & Banaji, 2005; Olson & Fazio, 2003 ).
Test/C0Retest
The IAT test /C0retest reliabilities over a variety of intervals are lower than the alphas: a median of .56 ( Nosek
et al., 2005 ; see also Cunningham et al., 2001 ;Fazio & Olson, 2003 , p. 211). The IAT performs best under a revised
scoring system that uses data from its practice trials, takes account of individual differences in variability of
response latency, and penalizes response latency for error trials ( Greenwald, Nosek, & Banaji, 2003 ).
Validity
Convergent/Concurrent
Entirely compatible indirect techniques predated the IAT (e.g., the MODE model and aversive racism below;
Fazio & Olson, 2003 ); the IAT correlations with indirect measures are surprisingly weak (up to .38) unless latent-
variable analysis removes measurement error (.55) ( Fazio & Olson, 2003 ). Unsatisfactory reliabilities on either pre-
dictors or criterion may contribute ( Schnabel et al., 2008 ).694 24. MEASURES OF STEREOTYPING AND PREJUDICE: BAROMETERS OF BIAS
VI. SOCIOCULTURAL INTERACTION AND CONFLICT