A reaction time paradigm to assess (implicit) complaint-specific dysfunctional beliefs

We investigated whether an implicit association test (IAT) can be used to a ssess dysfunctional beliefs in the realm of psychopathology. As a first exp loration ale therefore constructed a IAT that was designed to differentiate between high and low social anxious individuals. Social situation and neut ral words were the targets (e.g. date us hall), and positive and negative o utcomes (e.g. compliment vs rejection) the associated attributes. High soci al anxious women (N=32) showed the predicted deterioration of task performa nce if the required responses switched from compatible to incompatible with the idea that social situations are related to negative outcomes and vice versa, whereas the opposite was true for low anxious women (N=32). Thus a m odified IAT seems a useful and highly flexible tool to implicitly assess co mplaint-specific dysfunctional associations and may be a valuable addition to the usual (explicit) self-report measures of patients' beliefs. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.