Host: Dr Elliot Ludvig

 Abstract: How can implicit attitudes best be measured? Experiments using the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) have reported positive or neutral implicit attitudes (e.g., positive attitudes towards death and dying) in cases in which negative attitudes are normally found on explicit or other implicit measures. It was hypothesised that these results might reflect a positive framing bias (PFB) that occurs when participants complete the IRAP. It was found that IRAP scores were influenced by how the task was framed to the participants, that the framing effect was modulated by the strength of prior stimulus associations, and that a default PFB led to an overestimation of positive implicit attitudes when measured by the IRAP. To overcome this PFB, we designed a new task (Simple Implicit Procedure: SIP) that we used in experiments across several domains. We also tested practice effects in the most popular measures of implicit attitudes, as well as the SIP. Lastly, we found that word type (nouns, verbs and adjectives) can influence how participants respond in reaction time tasks. All these flaws and response biases have substantial implications for the interpretation of results from various psychological tasks and might account for previous counterintuitive findings in the literature.