Implicit Association TestThe Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) has become a very popular method to use for measuring the strengths of associations between concepts, in an indirect way. Normally the IAT is used to measure the strength of associations between an attitude object and its valence. IATs measure the relative ease with which people are able to make associations between certain groups of people (e.g., older adults) and the concepts of "good" and "bad."
Ease of association, measured by judgment speed, is taken as evidence for an implicitly-held attitude toward that social group. It is a useful tool for measuring a variety of attitudes including gender, race, and political constructs (Nosek, Greenwald, & Banaji, 2005). Over 200 scientific studies have been published using the IAT and more than 4.5 million have taken the IAT on-line. The IAT has demonstrated to be both reliable and valid at detecting an individual’s level of implicit bias.