Clocking the social mind by identifying mental processes in the IAT with electrical neuroimaging

Abstract

Why do people take longer to associate the word "love" with outgroup words (incongruent condition) than with ingroup words (congruent condition)? Despite the widespread use of the implicit association test (IAT), it has remained unclear whether this IAT effect is due to additional mental processes in the incongruent condition, or due to longer duration of the same processes. Here, we addressed this previously insoluble issue by assessing the spatiotemporal evolution of brain electrical activity in 83 participants. From stimulus presentation until response production, we identified seven processes. Crucially, all seven processes occurred in the same temporal sequence in both conditions, but participants needed more time to perform one early occurring process (perceptual processing) and one late occurring process (implementing cognitive control to select the motor response) in the incongruent compared with the congruent condition. We also found that the latter process contributed to individual differences in implicit bias. These results advance understanding of the neural mechanics of response time differences in the IAT: They speak against theories that explain the IAT effect as due to additional processes in the incongruent condition and speak in favor of theories that assume a longer duration of specific processes in the incongruent condition. More broadly, our data analysis approach illustrates the potential of electrical neuroimaging to illuminate the temporal organization of mental processes involved in social cognition.implicit social cognition | social neuroscience | intergroup bias | ERP | microstates

When less is more – Implicit preference for incomplete bodies in xenomelia

“…Neural correlates of the IAT (see e.g. Schiller et al, 2016) are of high interest as they would offer a more direct insight into the interaction of neurological and social aspects of. and 'i' for negative concepts in block one and similarly in block one with the keys 'e' for complete bodies and 'i' for amputated bodies.…”

The Neurophysiology of Implicit Alcohol Associations in Recently Abstinent Patients With Alcohol Use Disorder: An Event‐Related Potential Study Considering Gender Effects

“…Only one study examined event-related potentials (ERPs) of an addiction-related IAT in a sample of patients with Internet addiction (Chen et al, 2018). Along with reports on early components (e.g., P1;Fleischhauer et al, 2014), those studies have repeatedly indicated that the amplitude (Chen et al, 2018;Coates and Campbell, 2010;Xiao et al, 2015) and timing (Schiller et al, 2016) of the N2 component differ between incongruent and congruent trials, which was attributed to a larger preresponse conflict in incongruent trials.…”

Making market research reliable

“…Respondents are required to make a quick response within a time limit of less than a second in order to avoid allowing time for rational thought. The idea behind the test is that a congruent pairing of an attribute and ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ will elicit a faster response than an incongruent pairing [7] .…”