> What I did find interesting: I found myself conditioned to the first choice
> of category (at a midpoint, they switch the "racial" image and
> [connotatively loaded] verbal categories), with myself always trying to
> remember not to go back to the first (rationally arbitrary) pairings. In
> other words, I found the difficulty to be in overcoming the mechanical
> conditioning of the original categories assigned by the test. (There is much
> emphasis on speed, placing the fingers exactly on certain keys, etc.)
>
> That being the case, should I worry that the test constructors first
> assigned the differently-toned images to "evil," "bad," etc.? Since if I
> look at this from the standpoint of classic conditioning, this can be seen
> as what is being "taught" to me by the experiment itself.
I think they address this in the first section of their FAQ:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/background/faqs.html
***
# Could the result be a function of the order in which I did the two parts? I had to group one category together with pleasant words first. I then found it difficult when I later had to group the other category with pleasant words.
Answer: The order in which tests are administered does make a difference to the overall result in some tests. However, the difference is small and recent changes to the test have sharply reduced the influence of order. Because of this order effect, the orders used for IATs presented on this website are assigned at random. For any data we present, we are careful to be sure that half the test-takers got the A then B order and the other half got the B then A order. With the revised task design, the order has only a minimal influence on task performance. If you want to check whether the order made a difference for you, you can take the test again and complete it if you get assigned to the reverse order. If you do take the test twice in different orders and get different outcomes, the best estimate of your result is intermediate between the two. For more information about the order effect, see this paper (Nosek, Greenwald, & Banaji, in press).
*** The paper referred to at the end seems to be:
Nosek, B. A., & Greenwald, A. G. (in press). (Part of) the case for a pragmatic approach to validity: Comment on De Houwer, Teige-Mocigemba, Spruyt, and Moors (2009) Psychological Bulletin