Implicit attitudes towards homosexuality: Reliability, validity, and controllability of the IAT

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the psychometric properties o f an Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) th at was adapted to measure implicit attitudes towards homosexuality. In a fi rst experiment, the validity of the Homosexuality-LAT was tested using a kn own group approach. Implicit and explicit attitudes were assessed in hetero sexual and homosexual men and women (N = 101). The results provided compell ing evidence for the convergent and discriminant validity of the Homosexual ity-IAT as a measure of implicit attitudes. No evidence was found for two a lternative explanations of IAT effects (familiarity with stimulus material and stereotype knowledge). The internal consistency of IAT scores was satis factory (alphas > .80), but retest correlations were lower. In a second exp eriment (N = 79) it was shown that uninformed participants were able to fak e positive explicit but not implicit attitudes. Discrepancies between impli cit and explicit attitudes towards homosexuality could be partially account ed for by individual differences in the motivation to control prejudiced be havior, thus providing independent evidence for the validity of the implici t attitude measure. Neither explicit nor implicit attitudes could be change d by persuasive messages. The results of both experiments are interpreted a s evidence for a single construct account of implicit and explicit attitude s towards homosexuality.