Implicit Association Test

The implicit association test (IAT) is a widely used measure of people’s associations in memory. These associations can be evaluative (e.g., Democrats and positivity) or descriptive (e.g., Republicans and wealth). The IAT is an indirect measure in that it does not ask people to explicitly report beliefs (e.g., Do you like Democrats? Do you think Republicans are wealthy?). Instead, the relative strength of associations is indexed from how one performs the IAT. Thus, IATs can both establish the presence of associations and index their strength (e.g., some people may associate Republicans with wealth more strongly than others).