Testing implicit attitudes
The term "implicit processes" refers to psychic aspects of which people are not, wholly or partially, aware of. It is an expression that is often used to refer to what is commonly called "unconscious".
The current theoretical interest in implicit processes research is related to the fact that access to consciousness is linked to the functioning of attention and memory. Knowledge on these cognitive processes, can give also new insights on exploration of unconscious processes.
Most of the attitudinal and organizational assessments normally use structured methods such as interviews and questionnaires. However, new methods have recently been developed that allow a more in-depth exploration of the conceptual relationships underlying the decision-making process.
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is one of the techniques we are testing. There are many variants of such test. In the simplest one, users are asked to quickly classify two concepts with an attribute (e.g. the concepts of "man" and "woman" with the attributes "extraverted, intraverted") to try to figure out whether in the cognitive representation of the person under examination there is a strong association between such concepts and attributes. Importantly, we are also testing much more complex applications.
We are currently experimenting with the estimation of the duration of stimuli with affective value as an instrument for testing implicit attitudes.