Implicit-association test

The implicit-association test (IAT) is a measure within social psychology designed to detect the strength of a person's automatic association between mental representations of objects (concepts) in memory. The IAT was introduced in the scientific literature in 1998 by Anthony Greenwald, Debbie McGhee, Joyce Sherry, and Jordan Schwartz. The IAT is now widely used in social psychology research and is used to some extent in clinical, cognitive, and developmental psychology research. Although some controversy still exists regarding the IAT and what it measures, much research into its validity and psychometric properties has been conducted since its introduction into the literature.