Predicting alcohol use with a recoding-free variant of the Implicit Association Test

Abstract

Recently, a modified version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT), the IAT-RF (IAT-Recoding Free) was developed which prevents recoding processes by switching response assignments randomly between trials rather than between blocks. In this study, the IAT-RF was used to measure and examine the predictive validity of recoding-free implicit alcohol associations with positive arousal. Findings with the IAT-RF demonstrated that alcohol was overall more strongly associated with negative sedation than with positive arousal. However, more importantly, the size of this compatibility effect was positively correlated with alcohol use indicating that stronger implicit alcohol associations with positive arousal are related to increased drinking. Further, implicit alcohol associations with positive arousal measured with the IAT-RF also predicted unique variance in alcohol use above the variance explained by explicit measures. Hence, the present findings suggest that implicit associations with positive arousal may play an important role in drinking behavior, and demonstrate the validity of the IAT-RF as a measure of implicit alcohol associations.