The IRAP Is Nonrelative but not Acontextual: Changes to the Contrast Category Influence Men’s Dehumanization of Women

Abstract

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...

Individuals with current suicidal ideation demonstrate implicit “fearlessness of death”

“…By employing semantically complex stimuli and appealing to responses on a single trial-type, the results of the current study rely on the "non-relative" nature of the IRAP's four trial-types. While the task's four trial-types are indeed procedurally separated (e.g., "life-positive" trials did not contain stimuli related to either "death" or "negative"), it is worth noting that research that we have conducted elsewhere has demonstrated that responding on one IRAP trial-type is influenced by the contents of the others (Hussey, Ní Mhaoileoin, et al, 2015). For example, that responses on the "my death-negative" trial-type may have differed if this had been contrast with a category other than "my life".…”

“…Specifically, each trial on the IRAP presents a specific category pairing in isolation (e.g., a "death-negative" trial contains no stimuli related to either "life" or "positive"). In doing so, the IRAP produces four separate and "non-relative" bias scores (Hussey, Thompson, McEnteggart, Barnes-Holmes, & Barnes-Holmes, 2015; although see Hussey, Ní Mhaoileoin, et al, 2015). In the context of the current study, this allows for the separation of evaluations of life as positive, life as negative, death as positive and death as negative.…”

Life is Good, But Death Ain’t Bad Either: Counter-Intuitive Implicit Biases to Death in a Normative Population

“…For example, one might compare evaluations of death on the IRAP between normative individuals and those with a history of suicidal behavior (e.g., ideation and/or attempts). Second, future research might seek to better understand the behavioral processes involved in IRAP performances themselves (e.g., Hussey, Ní Mhaoileoin, et al, 2015). In so doing, we would be in a better position to explain how unexpected or counterintuitive patterns of bias emerge.…”

Examining the effectiveness of brief interventions to strengthen a positive implicit relation between women and STEM across two timepoints

“…The response latency differential between stereotype-consistent and -inconsistent blocks is used to infer a person's implicit bias towards the stimuli influenced by historical and current contextual variables (Barnes-Holmes et al 2010). The IRAP is non-relative insofar as the fact that each of its four trialtype scores are calculated independently from the other trial-types (see Hughes et al 2017; see Hussey et al 2016). That is, for the trial-type relating men with STEM subjects, participants' response times are compared when they responded with 'True' versus 'False' only and are not compared with their responses to 'Men more suited to' Arts subjects.…”

“…We must also consider the possibility that the IRAP's sensitivity to extraneous variables (e.g., choice of contrasting label statement; Hussey et al 2016) limits the validity of comparisons across conditions and contexts. This is a potential issue of all measures of implicit bias which are likely susceptible to some degree of influence by contextual factors (Hussey et al 2016). It has been suggested that the IRAP's sensitivity may make replications across contexts complex (Golijani-Moghaddam et al 2013).…”