Using the Implicit Association Test to measure self-esteem and self-concept.

TLDR

The study employed the Implicit Association Test across three experiments to assess self‑esteem and gender self‑concept, measuring automatic associations of self with valence, testing known‑groups validity, and predicting cognitive reactions to success and failure. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that implicit IAT measures form a distinct factor weakly correlated with explicit self‑esteem, diverge from explicit measures, and that IAT gender self‑concept shows a three‑fold greater masculinity‑femininity gap than explicit measures, while high implicit self‑esteem predicts reduced adverse effects of failure on two of four outcomes.

Abstract

Experiment 1 used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & J. L. K. Schwartz, 1998) to measure self-esteem by assessing automatic associations of self with positive or negative valence. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed that two IAT measures defined a factor that was distinct from, but weakly correlated with, a factor defined by standard explicit (self-report) measures of self-esteem. Experiment 2 tested known-groups validity of two IAT gender self-concept measures. Compared with well-established explicit measures, the IAT measures revealed triple the difference in measured masculinity-femininity between men and women. Again, CFA revealed construct divergence between implicit and explicit measures. Experiment 3 assessed the self-esteem IAT's validity in predicting cognitive reactions to success and failure. High implicit self-esteem was associated in the predicted fashion with buffering against adverse effects of failure on two of four measures.