Anthony Greenwald on The Psychology of Blink

From ResearchChannel:

[Situationist friend] Dr. Anthony Greenwald, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, describes his research developing the method (described in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink) that reveals unconscious thought patterns that most people would rather not possess. Learn about these mental contents, as Dr. Greenwald demonstrates the method and describes how these patterns affect our behavior.

From ResearchChannel:

In this program from the University of Washington psychology department, MacArthur awardee Dr. Lisa Cooper, professor at John Hopkins University School of Medicine, describes her research on how patient race influences patient-physician communication and physician clinical decision making. She also includes her efforts to design interventions to negate these undesired racial and ethnic health care disparities.

Related Situationist posts:

• The Implicit Situation of Love
• Implicit Associations on Oprah
• “The Interior Situation of Undecided Voters,”
• “Confronting the Backlash against Implicit Bias,”
• “The Interior Situation of Suicide,”
• “Implicit Associations on Oprah,”
• “MSNBC Report on Implicit Associations,”
• “Measuring Implicit Attitudes,”
• “Mispredicting Our Reactions to Racism,”
• “Banaji & Greenwald on Edge – Part IV,” and
• “Do You Implicitly Prefer Markets or Regulation?”

The Implicit Situation of Love

Earlier this month, Anthony Greenwald, one of the pioneers in IAT research, posted on Scientific American.  Here is how his piece, titled “I Love Him, I Love Him Not” began.

* * *

Over a decade ago, I devised a test for detecting attitudes and biases operating below the level of a person’s awareness.

Known as the Implicit Association Test, or IAT, it is presently the most widely used of the measures of implicit attitudes that have been developed by social psychologists over the past 25 years. It has been self-administered online by millions, many of whom have been surprised—sometimes unpleasantly—by evidence of their own unconscious attitudes and stereotypes regarding race, age, gender, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.

Now it is my turn to be surprised—pleasantly. The test has been used for a purpose that I long imagined as possible, but never dared attempt, knowing that it needed the attention of psychologists who focus on romantic relationships.  The results suggest that the IAT is effective in predicting which romantic relationships will last.

The report, just published in the journal Psychological Science, is provocatively titled “Assessing the Seeds of Relationship Decay.” In it, three psychologists at the University of Rochester — Soonhee Lee, Ronald Rogge, and Harry Reis—describe their research predicting relationship breakup. They recruited participants by many means, including referrals by psychology faculty and various Internet sources. The mostly female participants were married, engaged, or otherwise in exclusive, committed relationships.

The research started with the collection of several measures—not only the IAT, but also some established questionnaire measures of relationship quality—all of which might be useful predictors of breakup.  Of the 222 participants who started, 116 were successfully re-contacted to obtain reports on the status of their relationships at various times up to 12 months later.

Nineteen (16%) of the re-contacted participants reported that a breakup had occurred.  Remarkably, the IAT measure of a subject’s attitude toward her partner did a better job of predicting the breakup than did several questionnaire measures of relationship quality.

The authors concluded that the questionnaire measures might have been ineffective either because participants were unaware of negative attitudes toward their partners or perhaps because they knew about them but were unwilling to report them. If that’s correct, the IAT worked because it depends on neither awareness of the attitude nor willingness to report it.

What exactly is the IAT, and how does it tap into mental processes that can operate outside of awareness?

* * *

You can read the entire post here.

For a sample of related Situationist posts, see “Cupid’s Situation,” “The Situation of Love,” “Some Situational Signals of a Suicidal Disposition,” “The Interior Situation of Undecided Voters,” “The Interior Situation of Suicide,” “Implicit Associations on Oprah,” “MSNBC Report on Implicit Associations,”“Measuring Implicit Attitudes,” “Mispredicting Our Reactions to Racism,” “Banaji & Greenwald on Edge – Part IV,” and “Do You Implicitly Prefer Markets or Regulation?,”

MSNBC Report on Implicit Associations

Here’s a ten-minute MSNBC segment on IAT test, in which Tony Greenwald attempts to shed light on the test results of two commentators on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

To read a sample of related Situationist posts, see “Mispredicting Our Reactions to Racism,” “Banaji & Greenwald on Edge – Part IV,” “Mahzarin Banaji’s Situation,” “The Situation of  Situationist – Mahzarin Banaji.”

To review the full collextion of previous Situationist posts discussing implicit associations click on the “Implicit Associations” category in the right margin or, for a list of such posts, click here. Go to Project Implicit to take the IAT discussed in this report here.  Take the Policy IAT here.