2024 Volume 66 Issue 2 Pages 137-148
Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a popular tool that is widely used in the field of social cognition. Part of the reason why is because the IAT is often used as a measurement of implicit social bias—though this assumption has been increasingly challenged in the literature. In this short review, we focus on a variety of cognitive mechanisms that can possibly explain the IAT’s output, and argue that IAT is a downstream measurement that can be reflecting either: 1) implicit attitude, 2) explicit attitude, or 3) explicit but concealed attitude. As such, studies that attempt to infer implicitness or dissociate explicit and implicit attitudes may require caution in data interpretation.
