The Implicit Association Test (IAT), developed by Anthony Greenwald and colleagues in 1998, measures the strength of automatic associations between concepts — including associations that people deny holding consciously.

How It Works

Participants rapidly categorize words and images into groups. Response times reveal the strength of mental associations. When two categories you unconsciously associate are paired together, you respond faster. When they're not associated, you respond slower.

What the Race IAT Typically Shows

The majority of people — including many Black participants — show faster response times when pairing "White" with positive words and "Black" with negative words than the reverse. This pattern appears even in people who consciously endorse racial equality.

The Controversy

The IAT's ability to predict discriminatory behavior has been disputed. Some meta-analyses find weak correlations between IAT scores and actual behavior. Critics argue implicit bias scores are not stable across testing sessions and may not reflect genuine mental representations.

What It Contributes

Whatever its predictive limitations, the IAT demonstrated that automatic associations operate below conscious access — and that self-reported beliefs are not reliable guides to unconscious processes.

Reference:

Wikipedia: Implicit Association Test

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit-association_test