TY - JOUR
T1 - Using the IAT to predict ethnic and racial discrimination
T2 - Small effect sizes of unknown societal significance
AU - Oswald, Frederick L.
AU - Mitchell, Gregory
AU - Blanton, Hart
AU - Jaccard, James
AU - Tetlock, Philip E.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 American Psychological Association.
PY - 2015/4/1
Y1 - 2015/4/1
N2 - Greenwald, Banaji, and Nosek (2015) present a reanalysis of the meta-analysis by Oswald, Mitchell, Blanton, Jaccard, and Tetlock (2013) that examined the effect sizes of Implicit Association Tests (IATs) designed to predict racial and ethnic discrimination. We discuss points of agreement and disagreement with respect to methods used to synthesize the IAT studies, and we correct an error by Greenwald et al. that obscures a key contribution of our meta-analysis. In the end, all of the meta-analyses converge on the conclusion that, across diverse methods of coding and analyzing the data, IAT scores are not good predictors of ethnic or racial discrimination, and explain, at most, small fractions of the variance in discriminatory behavior in controlled laboratory settings. The thought experiments presented by Greenwald et al. go well beyond the lab to claim systematic IAT effects in noisy real-world settings, but these hypothetical exercises depend crucially on untested and, arguably, untenable assumptions.
AB - Greenwald, Banaji, and Nosek (2015) present a reanalysis of the meta-analysis by Oswald, Mitchell, Blanton, Jaccard, and Tetlock (2013) that examined the effect sizes of Implicit Association Tests (IATs) designed to predict racial and ethnic discrimination. We discuss points of agreement and disagreement with respect to methods used to synthesize the IAT studies, and we correct an error by Greenwald et al. that obscures a key contribution of our meta-analysis. In the end, all of the meta-analyses converge on the conclusion that, across diverse methods of coding and analyzing the data, IAT scores are not good predictors of ethnic or racial discrimination, and explain, at most, small fractions of the variance in discriminatory behavior in controlled laboratory settings. The thought experiments presented by Greenwald et al. go well beyond the lab to claim systematic IAT effects in noisy real-world settings, but these hypothetical exercises depend crucially on untested and, arguably, untenable assumptions.
KW - Discrimination
KW - Implicit association test
KW - Implicit social cognition
KW - Predictive validity
KW - Prejudice
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84926376497&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84926376497&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1037/pspa0000023
DO - 10.1037/pspa0000023
M3 - Article
C2 - 25844574
AN - SCOPUS:84926376497
SN - 0022-3514
VL - 108
SP - 562
EP - 571
JO - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
JF - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
IS - 4
ER -