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Original Article

The Insect-Nonword IAT Revisited

Dissociating Between Evaluative Associations and Recoding

Published Online:January 01, 2015https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000220

Abstract

In 2001, Brendl and colleagues reported a reversed compatibility effect for an insect-nonword Implicit Association Test (IAT), apparently indicating more positive attitudes for insects than for neutral nonwords and therefore calling into question the validity of the IAT. According to a prominent alternative account of IAT effects, this reversed effect reflects task recoding based on salience asymmetries. To disentangle the contributions of associations and recoding, we analyzed data of an insect-nonword IAT with the ReAL model and discovered that (1) recoding is responsible for the unexpected direction of this IAT effect and (2) insects still activated negative associations. Applying the ReAL model helps to avoid misleading interpretations of IAT effects by providing independent estimates for different processes within an IAT.

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