Katy Bissell

Something that was particularly interesting to me about this paper was the authors’ claim that the IAT can predict explicit as well as implicit responses. The authors state that “IAT measures were similarly effective at predicting responses that are difficult to control and those that are easy to control” (25). I found this interesting because it almost seems as if the authors are working to support the idea of the adaptive unconscious controlling conscious actions and thoughts. The authors even mention “the results of this meta-analysis suggest automatic associations may contribute similarly to both automatic and deliberative responses” (Rudman, 2004).
This is a very important discovery with the IAT, because if people consciously act a certain way toward someone of a different race or background etc., but are not aware of why they act this way, the IAT would be able to clue them in. Going along with that, the authors found that “whereas explicit measures were impaired in their predictive validity when social desirability concerns were high, IAT measures were relatively unaffected” (23). This seems to prove that even when people know they shouldn’t harbor certain feelings and/or attitudes because they are socially unacceptable, it can be revealed that they may be harboring such attitudes unconsciously, which means they would not be aware of these feelings, even if they acted on them.
If the IAT can connect implicit and explicit measures like this paper shows, does it mean that the adaptive unconscious does, in fact, exist AND control our conscious actions without our being naturally aware of it, unless we all take the IAT? This is an essential test if that is the case.