Early neural markers of implicit attitudes: N170 modulated by intergroup and evaluative contexts in IAT

Abstract

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the most popular measure to evaluate implicit attitudes. Nevertheless, its neural correlates are not yet fully understood. We examined event related potentials (ERPs) in response to face- and word processing while indigenous and non-indigenous participants performed an IAT displaying faces (ingroup and outgroup members) and words (positive and negative valence) as targets of category judgments. The N170 component was modulated by valence of words and by ingroup/outgroup face categorization. Contextual effects (face–words implicitly associated in the task) had an influence on the N170 amplitude modulation. On the one hand, in face categorization, right N170 showed differences according to the association between social categories of faces and affective valence of words. On the other, in word categorization, left N170 presented a similar modulation when the task implied a negative-valence associated with ingroup faces. Only indigenous participants showed a significant IAT effect and N170 differences. Our results demonstrate an early ERP blending of stimuli processing with both intergroup and evaluative contexts, suggesting an integration of contextual information related to intergroup attitudes during the early stages of word and face processing. To our knowledge, this is the first report of early ERPs during an ethnicity IAT, opening a new branch of exchange between social neuroscience and social psychology of attitudes.

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

“…The second was found in a later mental process, starting around 450 ms after stimulus onset (microstate 6). Thus, in line with previous EEG studies, we found differences between the two IAT conditions in both the first (18)(19)(20)(21) and second half (18,19,(22)(23)(24) of task execution. Adding to previous research, we demonstrated that these differences were due to a longer duration of the same mental Congruent 0 88 88 132 158 224 224 252 252 442 442 612 612 742 742 868 Incongruent 0 88 88 132 156 226 226 260 260 446 446 664 664 826 826 954 processes in the incongruent condition.…”

“…[18][19][20][21] and at late time periods (in the second half of task execution; refs. 18, 19, and 22-24).…”

Electrophysiological evidence for executive control and efficient categorization involved in implicit self-evaluation

“…This finding is consistent with previous electrophysiological studies on implicit self-evaluation, which also failed to find the compatibility effect on perceptual process (e.g., Egenolf et al, 2013;Yang & Zhang, 2009). However, it is inconsistent with some previous studies on implicit attitudes (e.g., racial attitude), which found that perceptual process was affected by racial biases (e.g., Ibanez et al, 2010). In our opinion, this inconsistency is due to the difference between self-evaluation and ingroup/outgroup evaluation.…”

“…First, visual perceptual processes are sensitive to compatibility, reflected in the occipital distributed P100 (Fleischhauer, Strobel, Diers, & Enge, 2014) and N170 (Ibanez et al, 2010) components. Second, the N200 was found to be sensitive to the category-attribute association in the IAT paradigm (Coates & Campbell, 2010).…”

Social Cognitive Training Improves Emotional Processing and Reduces Aggressive Attitudes in Ex-combatants

“…The Emotion Recognition Task (ERT) is a face and word recognition task adapted from previous studies (Hurtado et al, 2009; Ibáñez et al, 2010, 2011; Petroni et al, 2011). This cognitive function has been thought of as a building block of social cognition (Green et al, 2008; Kurtz and Richardson, 2011; Pinkham et al, 2014).…”