Dataset Information

Single-Target Implicit Association Tests (ST-IAT) Predict Voting Behavior of Decided and Undecided Voters in Swiss Referendums.

ABSTRACT: Undecided voters represent a major challenge to political pollsters. Recently, political psychologists have proposed the use of implicit association tests (IAT) to measure implicit attitudes toward political parties and candidates and predict voting behavior of undecided voters. A number of studies have shown that both implicit and explicit (i.e., self-reported) attitudes contribute to the prediction of voting behavior. More importantly, recent research suggests that implicit attitudes may be more useful for predicting the vote of undecided voters in the case of specific political issues rather than elections. Due to its direct-democratic political system, Switzerland represents an ideal place to investigate the predictive validity of IATs in the context of political votes. In this article, I present evidence from three studies in which both explicit and implicit measures were used ahead of the vote on four different referendums. Explicit measures predicted voting better than implicit attitudes for decided voters while implicit and explicit attitudes were equally good predictors among undecided voters. In addition, implicit attitudes predicted voting behavior descriptively, but not significantly better for undecided voters while, also from a descriptive point of view, explicit attitudes predicted voting better for decided respondents. In sum, results suggest that, as argued in previous research, the predictive value of implicit attitudes may be higher in the context of issue-related votes but still not as high as initially hoped-for.

SUBMITTER: Raccuia L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5061388 | biostudies-other | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Single-Target Implicit Association Tests (ST-IAT) Predict Voting Behavior of Decided and Undecided Voters in Swiss Referendums.

Raccuia Livio L

PloS one 20161012 10

Undecided voters represent a major challenge to political pollsters. Recently, political psychologists have proposed the use of implicit association tests (IAT) to measure implicit attitudes toward political parties and candidates and predict voting behavior of undecided voters. A number of studies have shown that both implicit and explicit (i.e., self-reported) attitudes contribute to the prediction of voting behavior. More importantly, recent research suggests that implicit attitudes may be mo ...[more]

PMID: 27732617

Similar Datasets

Project description:Implicit attitudes are evaluations that are made automatically, unconsciously, unintentionally, or without conscious and deliberative processing (Nosek et al., 2007; Gawronski and De Houwer, 2014). For the last two decades implicit measures have been developed and used to assess people's attitudes and social cognition, with the most widely used measure being the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 2003). This measure has been used extensively to assess racial biases and a number of studies have examined the reliability of the IAT when administered to adults (Cunningham et al., 2001; Gawronski, 2002; Greenwald et al., 2003; Nosek et al., 2005; Nosek and Smyth, 2007; Bar-Anan and Nosek, 2014). In recent years, the IAT has also been modified for use with children. Despite the potential of this measure to provide insight into the early emergence of implicit racial attitudes, little is known about the psychometric properties of these modified child-friendly IATs (Child-IATs). In the current research we examined the internal consistency of race-attitude Child-IATs when either reduced (Study 1) or traditional-length (Study 2) versions were administered to children (Studies 1 and 2) and adults (Study 2). We also examined the test-retest reliability of this measure with both child and adult participants (Study 2). We found that these measures demonstrate an internal consistency comparable to what has been seen in previous research with adults. In addition, the internal consistency of traditional-length Child-IATs completed in succession depended on the order in which they were completed; the first Child-IAT demonstrated higher internal consistency than the second for both children and adults (Study 2). Finally, we provide the first evidence that the test-retest reliability of the Child-IAT is comparable to what has been found previously with adults (Study 2). The implications of these findings for future research examining children's implicit social cognition are discussed.

Project description:Meta-analytic data highlight the value of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) as an indirect measure of personality. Based on evidence suggesting that confounding factors such as cognitive abilities contribute to the IAT effect, this study provides a first investigation of whether basic personality traits explain unwanted variance in the IAT. In a gender-balanced sample of 204 volunteers, the Big-Five dimensions were assessed via self-report, peer-report, and IAT. By means of structural equation modeling (SEM), latent Big-Five personality factors (based on self- and peer-report) were estimated and their predictive value for unwanted variance in the IAT was examined. In a first analysis, unwanted variance was defined in the sense of method-specific variance which may result from differences in task demands between the two IAT block conditions and which can be mirrored by the absolute size of the IAT effects. In a second analysis, unwanted variance was examined in a broader sense defined as those systematic variance components in the raw IAT scores that are not explained by the latent implicit personality factors. In contrast to the absolute IAT scores, this also considers biases associated with the direction of IAT effects (i.e., whether they are positive or negative in sign), biases that might result, for example, from the IAT's stimulus or category features. None of the explicit Big-Five factors was predictive for method-specific variance in the IATs (first analysis). However, when considering unwanted variance that goes beyond pure method-specific variance (second analysis), a substantial effect of neuroticism occurred that may have been driven by the affective valence of IAT attribute categories and the facilitated processing of negative stimuli, typically associated with neuroticism. The findings thus point to the necessity of using attribute category labels and stimuli of similar affective valence in personality IATs to avoid confounding due to recoding.

Dataset Information

Single-Target Implicit Association Tests (ST-IAT) Predict Voting Behavior of Decided and Undecided Voters in Swiss Referendums.

Publications

Single-Target Implicit Association Tests (ST-IAT) Predict Voting Behavior of Decided and Undecided Voters in Swiss Referendums.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure