Application and validation of an implicit association test in the measurement of implicit prejudice among children

Abstract

A total of 80 children of 8 years of age from Belgrade, Serbia completed the Child Implicit Association Test assessing implicit ethnic prejudices toward Roma and a set of explicit self-report measures (the scale of social distance toward Roma and the list of attributes describing Roma people, loading on two factors labeled Attractiveness and Potency). The reliability was determined using the analysis of internal consistency, while the test validity was assessed by correlation between the IAT-D measure and explicit measures. The obtained reliability of the Child IAT (alpha = 0.73) is within the usual range of reliability of the Adult IAT. Correlations of the IAT-D measure with the social distance scale (r = 0.252) and the Attractiveness scale (r = 0.263) conform to the correlations of implicit and explicit measures of ethnic prejudice established in previous research. The findings suggest that this test can be a useful additional methodological tool in the study of ethnic prejudice among children.