Behavior in Social Settings - Inverted and Upright IATs & Interracial Interactions

BEHAVIOR IN SOCIAL SETTING: INVERTED AND UPRIGHT IATS AND
INTERRACIAL INTERACTIONS
James Lee
Submitted to the faculty of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Honors degree in Psychology
Indiana University
May, 2014

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Accepted by the Psychological and Brain Sciences Faculty, Indiana University, in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the Honors degree in Psychology.
________________________
Robert J. Rydell, PhD (Chair)
________________________
Edward R. Hirt, PhD
________________________
Eliot R. Smith, PhD

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Acknowledgments
I wish like to thank my mentor Dr. Robert Rydell for assisting me in creating this study,
mentoring me throughout the process, and giving me the opportunity to defend my honor’s thesis.
I would also like to thank Dr. Ed Hirt and Dr. Eliot Smith for being on my thesis committee and
providing me with different perspectives and helpful comments. I sincerely appreciate all the
assistance, advice, and knowledge people around me have given me to help me grow as a critical
thinker, a researcher, and more importantly, a person. Finally, I would like to thank my father,
Ted Lee, who is up there somewhere watching over me, my mother, Christine Lee, who has
provided me unconditional love, amazingly intelligent wisdom, and the thing I appreciate the
most: the freedom to pursue my dreams. Thank you.

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James Lee
Behavior in Social Setting: Inverted and Upright IAT and Interracial Interaction
Abstract
Past research has found that implicit and explicit attitude measures can predict different types of
behaviors and judgments, especially when people are motivated to vigilantly control their
behaviors in social sensitive situations to avoid looking biased. This study examined if a
modified version of a well-established measure of implicit racial prejudice could better predict
the quality of participants’ interaction with an African American male confederate (as opposed to
a White male confederate) than the traditional version of the measure. Specifically, participants
completed two different versions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure their implicit
prejudice toward African Americans. One version we used pictures of African Americans
presented upright (upright IAT), while the other version had the pictures presented in an inverted
fashion (inverted IAT). Participants also had a 3 minute conversation on the topic of ‘dating
partners’ with either an African American or a White confederate who was trained to respond in
a neutral scripted way. Participants also completed an explicit measure of prejudice and a survey
about their demeanor as well as the confederate’s demeanor during the interaction (the
confederate completed the same measures). Because the inverted IAT has been shown, relative
to the upright IAT, to reduce participants’ motivation to control their prejudice while completing
the IAT due to inverted out-group faces being dehumanized, it might be a more accurate estimate

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of the affect automatically activated in response to African American versus White faces.
Therefore upright IAT should better predict the quality of the interracial interaction than the
upright IAT, from both the participants’ and the confederates’ perspective. This prediction was
not confirmed. However, the results showed that the African American confederate consistently
gave interactions with low prejudice participants, as measured by both types of IATs, a more
favorable rating than interactions with high prejudice participants, while the White confederate
gave interactions with low and high prejudice participants’ similar evaluations. Participants’
evaluations of themselves show a different pattern. Those indicating low prejudice on the
inverted IAT rated themselves as poorer during interracial interactions than those indicating high
prejudice on the inverted IAT. Further, the explicit attitude measure was unrelated to participants’
or confederates’ ratings of the interaction. Although this present study did not show that the
inverted IAT would better predict the participants’ and the confederates’ ratings of the
interaction, it was able to point out potential compensation tactics that high prejudice participants
use in dealing with perceptions on interracial interactions.

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Whether intentionally or unintentionally, people naturally categorize others, make
judgments, create associations, and form attitudes (Fazio, 1990). As people analyze the objects
or around them, they are forming, changing, and reinforcing attitudes in order to be able to
organize their world and have “ready-made” evaluations that they can use to aid them in
determining how to behave. One doesn’t have to be actively thinking about something or
someone to form some sort of evaluative association, nor can they actively prevent themselves
from forming these associations (Fazio, 2007; Smith & Decoster, 2000). Although some attitudes
are relatively homogeneous (i.e., the attitude object is only associated with information of one
valence), people’s evaluations can be heterogeneous (i.e., associated with valence inconsistent
information), multifaceted, and sometimes socially unacceptable. Given these issues, measuring
evaluations can be quite tricky and, therefore, a variety of attitude assessment techniques are
needed. Most commonly, people’s attitudes are assessed with two types of measures, those
assessing implicit attitudes and explicit attitudes.
While these measures are sometimes correlated, oftentimes, especially when the attitude
object is socially sensitive and lends itself to self-presentational concerns, these attitudes can be
uncorrelated (Dovidio, Kawakami, & Beach, 2001). In addition to sometimes being uncorrelated,
implicit and explicit attitudes can predict different types of behaviors, especially during
interracial interactions (Dovidio et al., 2001; McConnell & Leibold, 2001; see Greenwald et al.,
2009 for a meta-analysis). This thesis will examine if a newly developed variation of a well-

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established measure of implicit prejudice will better predict participants’ and confederates’
perceptions of their behavior during interracial interactions than the more commonly used
version of this measure.
One of the most widely used methods to assess implicit attitudes is the Implicit
Association Test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998). The IAT assesses reaction time during a
categorization task and uses these response latencies to determine how strong of an association
an individual has between two concepts. In attitudes research, the IAT can be used to determine
the associations people have between social categories like weight, age, sexuality, and race and
valence (i.e., associating the social categories with positivity or negativity). In hopes of
examining implicit racial attitudes, researchers in the past have used the IAT to assess
associations between race and positivity/negativity. More specifically, researchers have
examined the extent to which negativity (relative to positivity) is more strongly associated with
African Americans than with Whites (e.g., Greenwald et al., 1998; McConnell & Leibold, 2001).
The race IAT measures the response times of a categorization task performed on a computer.
Participants are given a number of blocks, where they are asked to use two response keys to
indicate the race of the person in photograph as African American or European American, or
whether a word is positive or negative (e.g., happy, joy, agony, terrible). Importantly, the IAT
utilizes two different types of blocks. On incongruent blocks for the race IAT, the response for
an African American photograph and a positive word are made on one response key and the

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response for a European American photograph and a negative word are made on another
response key. On congruent blocks, the response for an African American photograph and a
negative word are made on one response key and the response for a European American
photograph and a positive word are made on another response key. Greater implicit bias is
indexed by the extent to which responses on trials in the incongruent blocks take longer than
responses to trials in the congruent blocks.
The IAT is widely accepted and utilized in social psychological research, and has become
a prominent way of examining implicit associations because of its relatively high internal
consistency, its immunity from participant’s familiarity with IAT stimuli, and the test’s structure
which minimizes participants’ ability to control their responses, and thus easily control their
scores (see Greenwald et al., 2003). In this research, in addition to the traditional version of the
IAT, a modified version of the IAT was used to test for implicit racial attitudes. In this modified
IAT, the images used to represent African Americans and Whites were inverted (upside down).
The traditional IAT presents the images upright. It is important to note that the same image
orientation (upright or inverted) was used for the whole block and did not change from trial to
trial.
Past research has suggested that faces are processed configurally (i.e., holistically and not
feature by feature), especially when compared to the way other objects are processes, thus
leading to human’s development of superb facial recognition skill. Human faces have the general

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similarity of ‘eyes-over-nose-over-mouth’ configuration; therefore, an acute sensitivity to faces
is a mandatory, due to their similar structure, for humans to differentiate between faces
(Hugenberg & Corneille, 2009). Studies have found a lot of evidence suggesting that inverting
the face disrupts people’s configural faces (Yin, 1969). New research has shown that reducing
configural face processing by inverting faces can lead to dehumanization of the person whose
face is presented in an inverted, relative to an upright, fashion (Hugenberg, See, Young, &
Rydell, 2014). Moreover, the dehumanization of inverted faces is stronger for out-group faces,
and as such can lead to greater implicit bias on an inverted race IAT relative to an upright race
IAT (Rydell, Hugenberg, See, & Young, 2014). The work on inverted versus upright race IAT
shows that this inversion effect on implicit prejudice is due to inverted African American faces
being dehumanized and, as a consequence of this dehumanization, participants being less
motived or willing to exert control to overcome appearing biased against African Americans on
the IAT. As is well known (see Sherman et al., 2008), one factor that influences IAT responses is
attempts to overcome bias. It seems that presenting inverted faces on the IAT strips away
motivation to overcome bias, which is relatively strong on the upright IAT, leading to greater
implicit prejudice on the inverted IAT. Given that the inverted IAT seems to reduce motivation
to overcome bias, it may be a relatively more “pure” measure of implicit prejudice than the
upright IAT. That is, the upright IAT has additional, non-attitudinal processes operating that may
obscure the association between African Americans and negativity. To the extent that the

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inverted IAT is free of those additional processes, it may better capture implicit prejudice and,
therefore, better predict perceptions of behavior during an interracial interaction.
Implicit prejudice and predicting behavior in interracial interactions
An important method of assessing discrimination is conducting in-lab interracial
interaction that are created for White participants to interact with an African American (or a
White) confederate in a controlled lab setting. Dovidio, Kawakami, and Gaertner (2001), for
example, had participants engage in a face-to-face interaction with both a same race (White) and
different race (African American) confederate who were acting as though they were actual
participants. In the face-to-face interaction, one of the confederates and the participant were
asked to engage in a conversation, and after 3 minutes, the participants were introduced to the
other confederate. The confederates were all males, and the main physical difference between the
confederates was their skin color, where one was African American and the other was White.
After the interactions, participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire that was used to assess
perceived friendliness of their conversation partner. The participating confederates were asked to
complete the same questionnaire to rate the actual participants, so that the participants’ responses
could be compared to those of the confederates to see how well implicit and explicit attitudes
predicted confederates’ and participants’ perceptions of the interaction. The study found that the
White participant’s scores on an attitude toward African Americans scale were related to the
ratings of the participants’ greater verbal friendliness to the White relative to the African

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American confederate. More important for the present concerns, White participants’ implicit
attitudes significantly predicted their non-verbal friendliness as well as confederates’ and
observers’ (who watched a videotape of the interaction) perceived bias in participants’
friendliness (Dovidio et al., 2001).
Another study, conducted by McConnell & Leibold (2001), showed that implicit racial
prejudice and explicit racial prejudice can predict different types of behaviors. In this study,
participants were asked to do a number of tasks while the researchers secretly video-taped the
participants’ behavior. The study was initially run by a White experimenter, but an African
American experimenter would take over during the second phase of the experiment, and the
participant’s behavior toward each experimenter was assessed. After the completing the study,
trained researchers were then asked to review the videos and assess for participants’ behaviors.
Implicit racial prejudice was positively related to relatively more negative non-verbal behaviors
toward the African American experimenter (i.e., less forward leaning, less facing experimenter,
less body openness, less expressiveness, less eye contact, greater seating distance, less speaking
time, less smiling, more speech errors, more speech hesitations, greater fidgeting, less laughter at
joke, and fewer social comments). However, the explicit racial prejudice measure was not a
strong predictor of more negative non-verbal behaviors toward the African American
experimenter, and instead related more closely to the content of their conversation with the
experimenters.

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The current study
This study sought to examine if the inverted version of the IAT, because it is less likely to
be influenced by alterations based on attempting to overcome bias, would lead to better
prediction of participants’ and confederates’ perception of an interracial (versus same race)
interaction than the tradition, upright IAT. Therefore, in the present research, participants were
given the standard race IAT (upright IAT), where images are presented upright, and the modified
race IAT, where the images are presented inverted (inverted IAT). Participants were then asked
to enter another room with a confederate (who was either a White male or an African American
male), acting as another participant, and the experimenter. A 3 minute conversation on the topic
of ‘qualities in a dating partner’ was then conducted and video-taped. After the conversation, the
participant and confederate were asked to return to the room where they completed the IAT and
asked to fill out a survey assessing the participants’ perception of themselves, the participants’
perception of the confederate, the confederate’s perception of himself, and the confederate’s
perception of the participant during the interaction.
As we noted above, it was predicted that the inverted IAT would be a better predictor of
participants’ and the African American confederate’s perceptions of the interracial interaction
than the upright IAT. However, it was predicted that there would be little difference in the
inverted and upright IAT’s ability to predict participants’ ratings and the White confederate’s
ratings of their interaction (i.e., neither IAT would predict perceptions of the interaction well).

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Methods
Participant. A total of 80 participants (28 men and 52 women) were recruited for this
research study. Of those participants, 50 were White, 5 were Hispanic, 4 were African American
(whose data were not used), 17 were Asian, and 4 identified themselves as other. Participants
were given $10 for completing the study.
Procedure
Conditions. When the participants arrived, they were randomly assigned to one of 4
different experimental conditions in a 2 (order: explicit attitude measures first, implicit
association tests first) x 2 (confederate race: African American, White) between-subjects
factorial.
Implicit Association Tests. The Implicit Associations Test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998)
will be used to assess implicit attitudes toward African Americans. This IAT will have 36 stimuli:
8 pictures of male African Americans, 8 pictures of male Whites, 10 positive adjectives (e.g.,
wonderful), and 10 negative adjectives (e.g., disgusting). All stimuli will be presented in the
center of the monitor and the adjectives will always be presented in lowercase letters. For the
Implicit Associations Test, the 8 pictures of African Americans and of Whites will be presented
in two different versions in Blocks 3, 4, 6, and 7: right side up and inverted (i.e., upside down).
As inverting faces is a strong way to reduce configured face processing, we expect that inverted
faces may not lead to as strong activation of racial prejudice as faces right side up. Specifically,

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we are interested in testing the secondary hypothesis that implicit bias may be reduced on
inverted trials and therefore could be a stronger predictor of attitudes than the standard Implicit
Associations Test.
In Block 1, participants will judge photos African Americans and Whites and categorize
them as “African American” or “White” and in Block 2 they will categorize adjectives that are
presented as “negative” or “positive.” In Blocks 3 and 4 (Combination #1), participants will
determine whether the stimuli are “African American or negative” or “White or positive.” In
Block 5, participants will performed the same judgment task as Block 2 except the assignment of
response keys assigned to the two valence categories will be reversed. Finally, in Blocks 6 and 7
(Combination #2), participants will judge whether the stimuli are “African American or positive”
or “White or negative.” As in past IAT research, half of the participants will performed
Combination #1 in Blocks 3-4 and Combination #2 in Blocks 6-7, whereas the rest will perform
Combination #2 in Blocks 3-4 and Combination #1 in Blocks 6-7. Participants completed two
IATs following this format (and randomized), one with the pictures upright and the other with
the pictures inverted. In order to assess implicit attitudes toward African Americans for both
types of IATs, the mean response latencies of Combination #1 was subtracted from the mean
response latencies of Combination #2 divided by the standard deviation of all trials in
Combination #1 and Combination #2 (Greenwald et al., 2003). Thus, larger, positive difference

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scores reflected relatively more negative implicit attitudes toward African Americans on both the
upright IAT and the inverted IAT.
Explicit Racial Prejudice. Next, we measured participants’ explicit racial prejudice
(randomized order). By having participants rate African Americans and Whites separately on
three 9-point semantic differential scales: bad-good, negative-positive, and unfavorable-
favorable. Explicit racial prejudice was assessed by subtracting the scores for African Americans
(α = 0.91) from those of Whites (α = 0.93), with greater scores indicating greater prejudice
toward African Americans (M = 0.07), with this score not differing from zero, t < 1.
Interracial Interaction. Participants were escorted to a different room and told that they
would be interacting with another participant for an acquaintance process study. The room
contained two chairs, one for the participant and one for the confederate, which were tucked into
a rectangular table. The experimenter then explained that the study wanted to explore the
characteristics people look for in dating partners and that the session would be video-taped for
later evaluation. A camera was situated across from the participant and the confederate,
capturing the distance between the chairs and recording the body positions of the participant and
the confederate. There were two confederates, an African American male and a White male. All
confederates received practice to respond comparably but not in a rigidly scripted way during the
interaction. These confederates were unaware of the hypotheses of the study and the level of the
participant’s implicit and explicit prejudice. The topic for the interaction was “qualities you look

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for in a dating partner”. Conversations lasted for approximately 3 minutes, and after the
conversation, participants and the confederate were asked to complete an impression
questionnaire. This impression questionnaire included questions about the pleasantness, the
friendliness, the likability, and the warmth of the interaction or participants. For participants, this
questionnaire asked participants to evaluate, on a scale ranging from 1 to 5, their impressions of
the behavior of the confederate and the behavior of themselves during the interaction. For
confederates, this questionnaire asked confederates to evaluate, on a scale ranging from 1 to 5,
their impressions of the behavior of the participant and the behavior of themselves during the
interaction. From these ratings, four scales were created: confederate’s impression of the
participant (α=.59), confederate’s evaluation of the confederate (α=.47), participant’s evaluation
of the confederate (α=.89), and participant’s evaluation of the participant (α=.87).
Results
Of the 80 participants, 40 of them interacted with a White confederate, while 40 of them
interacted with an African American confederate. Among the 40 participants who interacted with
a White confederate, 37 participants’ inverted IAT scores and 39 participants’ upright IAT scores
were analyzed. Among the 40 participants who interacted with an African American confederate,
31 participants’ upright IAT scores and 32 participants' inverted IAT scores were analyzed
(participants’ data was missing due to being an African American participant, computer error, or
because the participant did not reach the accuracy criterion of 80% on one or both of the IATs).

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The difference in implicit prejudice between the upright and inverted IAT was examined.
Past research has shown greater prejudice on the inverted relative to the upright IAT (Rydell et
al., 2014). However, that pattern was not replicated here. There was no difference between the
inverted IAT (M=.32) and the upright IAT (M=.37), t(63)=-.96, p=.34.
To examine the effect of confederate race and upright IAT on confederate’s ratings of
participants, a hierarchical regression was conducted where inverted IAT scores, confederate
race, and their interaction (multiplicative function) were regressed on confederates’ ratings of
participants during the interaction. The interaction was significant (b = -0.54, SE = 0.22, t = -
2.48, p = 0.016; see Figure 1). Low prejudice participants were rated more positively by the
African American confederate than the White confederate (b = 0.38, SE = 0.10, t = 3.80, p =
0.0003). There was no effect of confederate race for the rating of high prejudice participants (b =
0.03, SE = 0.10, t = 0.33, p = 0.74).
To examine the effect of confederate race and upright IAT on confederates’ ratings of
confederates, a hierarchical regression was conducted where upright IAT scores, confederate
confederates during the interaction. The interaction was significant (b = -0. 64, SE = 0.18, t = -
3.53, p = 0.0008; see Figure 2). Low prejudice participants were rated more positively by the
African American confederate than the White confederate (b = 0.23, SE = 0.08, t = 2.68, p =
0.0094). High prejudice participants were rated more positively by the White confederate than

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Figure 1. Confederate’s Evaluation of the Participant in the Interaction as a Function of
Prejudice on the Upright IAT and Confederate Race.
3.5
4
4.5
5
Low Prejudice Upright IAT High Prejudice Upright IAT
White Confederate
AA Confederate

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Figure 2. Confederate’s Evaluation of the Confederate in the Interaction as a Function of
3.5
4
4.5
5
White Confederate
AA Confederate

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the African American confederate (b = -0.19, SE = 0.84, t = -2.37, p = 0.021).
To examine the effect of confederate race and upright IAT on participants’ ratings of
race, and their interaction (multiplicative function) were regressed on participants’ ratings of
participants during the interaction. The interaction was not significant (b = 0.24, SE = 0.52, t = 0.
4 7, p = 0.64; see Figure 3). There was no effect of confederate race for the rating of low
prejudice participants (b = -0.004, SE = 0.24, t = -0.02, p = 0.99). There was no effect of
confederate race for the rating of high prejudice participants (b = 0.16, SE = 0.23, t = 0.68, p =
0.50).
To examine the effect of confederate race and upright IAT on participants’ ratings of
confederates, a hierarchical regression was conducted where upright IAT scores, confederate
confederates during the interaction. The interaction was not significant (b = -0.07, SE = 0.51, t =
-0.134, p = 0.89; see Figure 4). There was no effect of confederate race for rating of low
confederate race for rating of high prejudice participants (b = -0.12, SE = 0.23, t = -0.52, p =
0.61).
To examine the effect of confederate race and inverted IAT on confederate’s ratings of

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Figure 3. Participants’ Evaluation of the Participant in the Interaction as a Function of Prejudice
on the Upright IAT and Confederate Race.
3.5
4
4.5
5
White Confederate
AA Confederate

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Figure 4. Participants’ Evaluation of the Confederate in the Interaction as a Function of
3.5
4
4.5
5
White Confederate
AA Confederate

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participants during the interaction. The interaction was not significant (b = -0.36, SE = 0.25, t = -
1.47, p = 0.147; see Figure 1). However, low prejudice participants were rated more positively
by the African American confederate than the White confederate (b = 0.28, SE = 0.10, t = 2.85, p
= 0.006). There was no effect of confederate race for the rating of high prejudice participants (b
= 0.07, SE = 0.10, t = 0.74, p = 0.46).
To examine the effect of confederate race and inverted IAT on confederates’ ratings of
confederates, a hierarchical regression was conducted where inverted IAT scores, confederate
confederates during the interaction. The interaction was not significant (b = 0.07, SE = 0.22, t =
0.33, p = 0.74; see Figure 5). There was no effect of confederate race for the rating of low
confederate race for the rating of high prejudice participants (b = -0.02, SE = 0.09, t = -0.22, p =
0.83).
To examine the effect of confederate race and inverted IAT on participants’ ratings of
participants during the interaction. The interaction was marginally significant (b = 0.98, SE =
0.58, t = 1.7, p = 0.0937; see Figure 3). There was no effect of confederate race for the rating of

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Figure 5. Confederate’s Evaluation of the Participant in the Interaction as a Function of
Prejudice on the Inverted IAT and Confederate Race.
3.5
4
4.5
5
Low Prejudice Inverted IAT High Prejudice Inverted IAT
White Confederate
AA Confederate

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Figure 6. Confederate’s Evaluation of the Confederate in the Interaction as a Function of
3.5
4
4.5
5
White Confederate
AA Confederate

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Figure 7. Participants’ Evaluation of the Participant in the Interaction as a Function of Prejudice
on the Inverted IAT and Confederate Race.
3.5
4
4.5
5
White Confederate
AA Confederate

22
low prejudice participants (b = -0.19, SE = 0.23, t = -0.80, p = 0.43). The effect of confederate
race for high prejudice participants was marginally significant (b = 0.38, SE = 0.23, t = 1.64, p =
0.1060).
To examine the effect of confederate race and inverted IAT on participants’ ratings of
confederates, a hierarchical regression was conducted where inverted IAT scores, confederate
confederates during the interaction. The interaction was significant (b = 1.27, SE = 0.53, t = 2. 42,
p = 0.018; see Figure 7). Low prejudice participants were rated more positively by the White
confederate than the African American confederate (b = -0.49, SE = 0.21, t = -2.29, p = 0.025).
There was no effect of confederate race for the rating of high prejudice participants (b = 0.25, SE
= 0.21, t = 1.17, p = 0.24).
Discussion
This research attempted to show that a modified version of the IAT that was created by
inverting the images of White and African American pictures presented in the task was better
able to predict the quality of interracial interactions than the traditional, upright version of the
IAT. This idea stemmed from research showing greater prejudice on an inverted IAT, relative to
an upright IAT, that was due to reduced ascriptions of humanity to inverted African American
faces, and thus reduced motivation to overcome bias on the inverted IAT. If the inverted IAT
could more “purely” measure implicit prejudice, it was believed that it might better predict

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Figure 8. Participants’ Evaluation of the Confederate in the Interaction as a Function of
3.5
4
4.5
5
White Confederate
AA Confederate

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interracial interactions than the traditional IAT (which is presumably being influenced by non-
attitudinal processes). Contrary to research on which these predictions were based, the inverted
IAT did not show greater prejudice than the upright IAT. Thus, it is unclear if participants
exerted less motivation to overcome bias when completing the inverted IAT than when
completing the upright IAT. Perhaps not surprisingly then, the inverted IAT did not better predict
the quality of interracial interactions, as indicated by both participants and the African American
confederate, than the upright IAT. There were, however, differences between the upright and
inverted IATs’ ability to predict participants’ and confederates’ perceptions of the interactions
that occurred during the study.
When examining confederates’ evaluation of the participants during the interaction for
both the inverted and the upright IAT, we found that the White confederate rated the low
prejudice and high prejudice participants similarly in terms of favorability. The African
American confederate, on the other hand, was sensitive to differences between low and high
prejudice participants. The African American confederate rated the low prejudice participant
more favorably during the interaction and rated the high prejudice participant less favorably. In
this comparison, the inverted IAT did not show a stronger effect than the upright IAT, but both
versions of the IAT were able to point out, at least to some degree, the difference in evaluation of
the participants as a function of implicit prejudice. This difference in sensitivity among the

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confederates suggests that the African American confederate may be picking up on some
behavioral cue that the White confederate missed or did not receive. Perhaps the African
American confederate’s low evaluation of the participants who showed greater prejudice on the
IAT was due to the behaviors of White participants roughly matching the negativity of their
implicitly measure evaluations of African Americans.
When participants’ evaluations of themselves during the interaction were examined, a
significant effect of the inverted IAT, but not the upright IAT, was found. For the inverted IAT,
low prejudice participants were consistently rating themselves as being less favorable during an
interaction with an African American than high prejudice participants. This pattern was not
statistically significant in the upright IAT, but a similar trend seemed to be occurring for that
measure as well. For both the upright and inverted IAT, the low prejudice participants rated
themselves less favorably during the interaction, while the high prejudice participants rated
themselves more favorably. This suggests that the high prejudice participants may be conscious
of their prejudice and compensating for this by rating themselves more favorably during the
interaction because they successfully justified their behavior or because they wanted to
compensate for their behavior. Interpreting this as a compensation effect is supported by the
participants’ evaluation of the African American confederate during the interaction on the
inverted IAT. Specifically, on the inverted IAT, the low prejudice participants gave the African
American confederate a considerably lower score as an interaction partner than the scores the

26
high prejudice participants did. This is consistent with the suggested compensation effect, where
high prejudice participants give themselves and the confederate a more favorable score to
illustrate a good interaction, when the interaction may not actually be as positive as the score
indicates. Unfortunately, it is also important to note the contradictory nature of the motivation to
control biases in the compensation effect and nature of the inverted IAT. With reducing the
motivation to control one’s biases acting as the main goal of implementing the inverted faces on
the inverted IAT, the compensation effect should be more prominent on the upright IAT than on
the inverted IAT. This, however, is not the case, thus undermining the credibility that this pattern
can be explained with the compensation effect.
Interestingly, the compensation phenomenon is not matched by the confederate’s
evaluation of the interaction. In the confederate’s evaluation of the participants, the African
American confederate rated the low prejudice participants as more favorable when compared to
the high prejudice participants. Furthermore, the African American confederate also rated
himself as being less favorable when he interacted with high prejudice participants. This suggests
that the African American confederate felt that the high prejudice participants were less
favorable and more pleasant during the interaction. This inconsistent with the high prejudice
participants’ evaluation of the interaction, where high prejudice participants rated both
themselves and the confederate as more favorably than the lower prejudice participants did.

27
Although this study was unable to replicate the effect of the inverted IAT that past studies
have suggested, it was able to highlight some differences between interactions with confederates
of different racial background. Particularly, the evidence suggests that the African American
confederate is much more sensitive to the prejudice level of the participants, than the White
confederate. Secondly, we also found evidence suggesting that high prejudice participants may
engage in compensation techniques to cover up for their prejudice. They may be aware of their
level of racial prejudice and of their behavior, thus leading the high prejudice participants to rate
positively and highly of the interaction with racial out-groups to make the participants feel better.
In this research study, participants were randomly assigned to interact with one of the two
confederates. As a result and unlike past research (e.g., McConnell & Leibold, 2001),
participants did not interact with both confederates, thus preventing assessment of interactions
within subjects. Without having the participants interact with confederates of both races, we are
unable to compare how different IATs were able to predict a relative difference between
perceptions of the quality of same race and inter-race interaction; therefore, it was impossible to
draw strong conclusions about how the same participant would act with a White versus and
African American confederate. This aspect of the design probably introduced a large amount of
error into our experiment. In retrospect, it probably would have been better to have participants
interact with both an African American confederate and a White confederate during their session
and use both versions of the IAT to predict differences between the two interactions.

28
Although the inverted IAT for this study was unable to replicate past studies, the
processing of faces still remains an important piece of deciphering the attitude measurement and
predicting interracial interactions. By extending our knowledge on the dehumanization of images
of faces of racial out-groups, we will be able to better understand our perceptual system and how
it can lead to dehumanization. Our racial biases are affected by social cognition but by learning
about our perceptual system, we may be able to bottom up influences on prejudice and
discrimination. More importantly, we need to understand the underlying mechanisms behind the
formation of our implicit associations both through social cognition and perceptual systems.

29
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