The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) is frequently employed over other measures of so-called implicit attitudes because it produces four independent and "non-relative" bias scores, thereby providing greater clarity around what drives an effect. Indeed, studies have sometimes emphasized the procedural separation of the four trial-types by choosing to report only the results of a single, theoretically meaningful trial-type. However, no research to date has examined the degree to which performance on a given trial-type is impacted upon by other stimulus categories employed within the task. The current study examined the extent to which response biases toward "women" are influenced by two different contrast categories: "men" versus "inanimate objects". Results indicated that greater dehumanization of women was observed in the context of the latter relative to the former category. The findings highlight that the IRAP may be described as a non-relative, but not a-contextual, measure of brief and immediate relational responses.Keywords: Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure, Relational Frame Theory, dehumanization of women
IRAP IS NON-RELATIVE BUT NOT A-CONTEXTUAL 3The IRAP is non-relative but not a-contextual: Changes to the contrast category influence men's dehumanization of women The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) was created as a way to assess natural verbal relations "on the fly" (Barnes-Holmes, Barnes-Holmes, Stewart, & Boles, 2010).More specifically, the IRAP was designed to capture arbitrarily applicable relational responding, which is posited by Relational Frame Theory (RFT) to account for complex human behavior such as language and higher cognition (see Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche, 2001; Hughes & Barnes-Holmes, 2016 for detailed treatments). The IRAP has now been employed in a wide range of contexts, including the assessment of such relational responding in domains of both clinical (see Vahey, Nicholson, & Barnes-Holmes, 2015 for meta-analysis) and social relevance (e.g., Drake et al., 2015;Rönspies et al., 2015), as well as within basic science contexts (e.g., Bortoloti & de Rose, 2012;Hughes, 2012;).Due to some procedural similarities with other measures such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT: Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998), the IRAP is frequently referred to or employed as a measure of so-called "implicit attitudes" (e.g., Hussey & Barnes-Holmes, 2012), a term that was borrowed from cognitive psychology and refers to "automatic" behaviors that are emitted outside of awareness or intentionality, under low volitional control and/or with high cognitive efficiency (see De Houwer & Moors, 2010). However, more recent work has emphasized that such references to the IRAP as a measure of implicit attitudes were heuristic in nature, and has attempted to clarify the relationship between the cognitive and functionalanalytic approaches to such behavioral phenomena (Hughes, Barnes-Holmes, & De Houwer, 2011;Hughes, Barnes-Holmes, & Vahey, 2012; see Barnes-Holmes & Hu...