title: Does the name-race implicit association test measure racial prejudice?
abstract: Research using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) has shown that names labeled as Caucasian elicit more positive associations than names labeled as non-Caucasian. One interpretation of this result is that the IAT measures latent racial prejudice. An alternative explanation is that the result is due to differences in in-group/out-group membership. In this study, we conducted three different IATs: one with same-race Dutch names versus racially charged Moroccan names; one with same-race Dutch names versus racially neutral Finnish names; and one with Moroccan names versus Finnish names. Results showed equivalent effects for the Dutch-Moroccan and Dutch-Finnish IATs, but no effect for the Finnish-Moroccan IAT. This suggests that the name-race IAT-effect is not due to racial prejudice. A diffusion model decomposition indicated that the IAT-effects were caused by changes in speed of information accumulation, response conservativeness, and non-decision time.
authors.affiliation: University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. vanravenzwaaij@uva.nl
authors.forename: Don
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: van Ravenzwaaij
authors.forename: Han L J
authors.initials: HL
authors.lastname: van der Maas
authors.forename: Eric-Jan
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Wagenmakers
mesh_terms: D001290:Attitude / Q000208:ethnology*; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology; D005387:Finland; D006801:Humans; D009018:Morocco; D009275:Names; D009426:Netherlands; D011287:Prejudice; D011581:Psychological Tests; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception; D044465:White People; D014936:Word Association Tests; D055815:Young Adult