Abstract: The Implicit Association Test (IAT), a reaction time measure of automatic memory-based associations without requiring conscious introspection, has been widely used to assess implicit social cognition in recent years. Although many research results show that the IAT provided meaningful insights into implicit social cognition while the explicit measures did not, it still needs more evidence for the IAT’s reliability and validity. Moreover, the theoretical interpretation of mechanism underlying the IAT is still a controversial issue. This article strongly suggests that researchers should use the IAT more appropriately and scrupulously. A new algorithm and some alternative methods derived from the IAT are also described.

Key words: implicit association test, implicit social cognition, reliability, validity