A Comparison of Implicit and Explicit Measures of Weight Bias
Renee Szostak

Abstract
In the present study, the results of the fat-thin Implicit Association Test (IAT) were compared with the results of explicit surveys in ten Indiana University undergraduates.
The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a significant correlation between subjects' results on the IAT and their responses in the explicit survey. Our survey was designed to measure the same bias that the IAT was measuring. We hypothesized that there would be a correlation between subjects' responses to the explicit surveys and the IAT but that the explicit survey responses would be less biased towards fat people than the results provided by the IAT due to …show more content…

Based on such previous research and our survey design, we hypothesized that there would be a correlation between subjects' responses to the explicit surveys and the IAT but that the explicit survey responses would be less biased towards fat people than the results provided by the IAT due to subjects not wanting to admit their true preferences and a lack of introspective access to implicity assessed representations.

METHODS

Participants Participants were ten Indiana University undergraduate students, 7 men and 3 women, who were randomly selected in a computer lab. They ranged in age from 18-22. Participants were not given any incentive or compensation for participating in the study.

Materials The stimuli were presented using the IAT on projectimplicit.com. Response times were recorded by the program.

Procedure Participants were randomly selected and given a seven question survey to complete that contained questions about their explicit attitudes towards fat people. For example, subjects were asked to respond with a scale that measured from "I strongly agree"(+3) to "I strongly disagree" (-3) to such statements as, "I would rather give up a year of my life than be fat." The complete survey can be found in appendix A. Participants were then instructed to complete an IAT program online, which is intended to measure their implicit associations. The IAT is a performance based-procedure that uses response times to determine the strength of