Processing fluency as a predictor of salience asymmetries in the Implicit Association Test

摘要

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the most popular indirect measure of attitudes in socialpsychology. Rothermund and Wentura (2001, 2004) suggested that artifacts such as salience asymme-tries are a source of compatibility effects in the IAT, and, therefore, the IAT does not necessarilymeasure attitude. They claim that salience asymmetries correspond with visual search asymmetries,such that the stimulus categories that are more quickly detected in a visual search task are alsocompatible in the IAT. We propose that processing fluency is a more reliable indicator of salienceasymmetries in the IAT than are visual search asymmetries. To test this hypothesis, we set processingfluency in opposition to visual search asymmetry to see which variable better predicted IAT effects. Inone pair of categories, the category that was more quickly detected in visual search was also morefluently processed in a binary classification task. In a second pair of categories, the category thatwas more quickly detected in visual search was the less fluently processed category. Across fourexperiments, we demonstrated that compatibility effects in the IAT corresponded with differencesin processing fluency between categories, rather than with visual search asymmetries.