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The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure: Exploring the Impact of Private Versus Public Contexts and the Response Latency Criterion on Pro-White and Anti-Black Stereotyping Among White Irish Individuals

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Abstract

The current research comprised two experiments that employed the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) as a measure of implicit racial attitudes. White Irish participants were exposed to blocks of trials that involved responding in a manner consistent with either a pro-white stereotype or a pro-black stereotype. In Experiment 1, participants completed the IRAP in either a public or private assessment situation. It was hypothesized that implicit pro-white stereotyping would decrease in the public context relative to the private context. The results, however, were not in accordance with this prediction. A second experiment was conducted to determine if requiring participants to respond in a public context but within a shorter timeframe would impact significantly upon implicit stereotyping. The results showed that a reduction in response latency significantly increased ingroup stereotyping. The findings appear to be consistent with the relational elaboration and coherence model.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, CO. Kildare, Ireland

    Dermot Barnes-Holmes, Aisling Murphy & Yvonne Barnes-Holmes

  2. National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

    Ian Stewart

Authors
  1. Dermot Barnes-Holmes
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  2. Aisling Murphy
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  3. Yvonne Barnes-Holmes
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  4. Ian Stewart
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dermot Barnes-Holmes.

Additional information

Preparation of this article was supported by funding awarded to the first, third, and fourth authors from the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences, under the Research Development Initiative (2008–09).

The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of the current work.

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Barnes-Holmes, D., Murphy, A., Barnes-Holmes, Y. et al. The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure: Exploring the Impact of Private Versus Public Contexts and the Response Latency Criterion on Pro-White and Anti-Black Stereotyping Among White Irish Individuals. Psychol Rec 60, 57–79 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395694

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