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This study explored how heterosexual and lesbian women differ in their implicit sexual responses. Previous research indicates that heterosexual women have physiological and implicit responses to both genders, whereas lesbian women show stronger responses to their preferred gender. This study used two implicit measures: the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) and the Function Acquisition Speed Test (FAST), both of which were novel in this context. We recruited 33 heterosexual and 25 lesbian women. Both IRAP and FAST were successful in differentiating the two sexual orientations as a group. The results confirmed that heterosexual women exhibit positive responses to both genders, while lesbian women show stronger, category-specific responses to their preferred gender. These findings align with previous research and provide further insight into the nuanced differences in sexual orientation responses among women.

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This study assessed psychometric qualities of indirect measures assessing Implicit Theories (ITs) of sexual offending: Implicit Association Task (IAT), Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP), and Relational Responding Task (RRT). For comparison reasons, aggressive behavior was also assessed. In a male sample from the general population (N = 109), we assessed each measure's (a) feasibility (mean latency, error rate, passing criteria), (b) internal consistency, (c) convergent and discriminant validity, and (d) incremental and predictive validity. Results indicated that no indirect measure met all criteria. Although the IAT was reasonably feasible and reliable in measuring aggression, ITs could not be reliably assessed. The RRT was feasible and somewhat reliable in assessing ITs, whereas the IRAP showed limited feasibility, high task complexity, low reliability, and the presence of a method factor. No measure had incremental predictive validity over the use of self-report measures, although we note that the power to detect such associations was limited. As none of the indirect measures performed satisfactorily on the measured criteria, the use of these measures in clinical practice seems currently unwarranted to assess ITs.

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This article provides a comprehensive overview of the development of a behavior-analytic alternative to the popular implicit association test (IAT), namely, the function acquisition speed test (FAST). The IAT appears, prima facia, to indirectly assess participants' learning histories with regard to the categorization of stimuli. However, its origin within cognitive psychology has rendered it replete with mentalism, conceptual ambiguity, statistical arbitrariness, and confounding procedural artifacts. The most popular behavioral alternative to the IAT, the widely used implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP), has inherited many of these concerning artifacts. In this article, we present a behavior-analytic critique of both the IAT and IRAP, and argue that a behavior-analytic approach to implicit measures must have stimulus control front and center in its analysis. We then outline a series of early research studies that provided the basis for a potentially superior procedure within our field. We go on to outline how this early research was harnessed in stepwise research, guided by a strict adherence to traditional behavior-analytic methods for the analysis of stimulus relations, to increasingly modify a test format fit for the behavior analyst interested in assessing stimulus relatedness.

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People’s sense of self plays an important role in psychological wellbeing and it is often targeted by perspective taking interventions in psychological treatments. The present study investigated if seeing oneself from the outside perspective in a virtual reality (VR) environment could be used to influence the patterns of relational responding that constitutes the sense of self. Changes in participants’ (N= 9) patterns of relating themselves vs. others with positive attributes and negative attributes were investigated using an Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) that was delivered before and after the one session perspective-taking intervention in VR. In addition, participants’ self-ratings about their experience of the VR intervention were investigated immediately after and one month after the VR-intervention. The results showed changes specifically in seeing oneself more positively, reflected by the increase in the Me – positive trial type in the IRAP. No systematic changes were seen in participants’ relational responding to themselves as being “negative” (i.e. bad, unloved, incompetent) or in patterns of relational responding considering others. In addition, participants experienced moderate positive emotions during the VR-intervention and evaluated the experience as meaningful based on their self-ratings. Together these results suggest that seeing oneself in the VR promoted positive experiences relating to oneself (AU)

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The feasibility of implicitly assessing medical student burnout was explored, using the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP), to measure longitudinal student burnout over the first two years of medical school and directly comparing it with an existing explicit measure of burnout (Maslach Burnout Inventory; MBI). Three successive cohorts of medical students completed both implicit and explicit measures of burnout at several time points during their first two years of medical school. Both assessments were conducted via the internet within a one-week period during the first week of medical school, the end of the first year of medical school, and the end of the second year, though not all cohorts were able to complete the assessments at all time points. Mixed linear models were used to compare the two measures directly, as well as to evaluate changes over time in each measure separately. Minimal correspondence was observed between the implicit and explicit measures of burnout on a within-subject basis. However, when analyzed separately, all subscales of both measures detected significant change over time in the direction of greater levels of burnout, particularly during the first year of medical school. These results provide preliminary evidence the IRAP is able to assess implicit attitudes related to burnout among medical students, though additional research is needed. The IRAP detected consistent improvements in positive implicit attitudes toward medical training during students' second year of medical school, which was not detected by the MBI. Possible implications of these findings are discussed.

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The mapping relationship between social status and horizontal space (left/right) in Chinese culture has a long history. In order to explore the representation pattern of horizontal spatial metaphor of social status in Chinese culture, this study introduced two direct measurements, implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP) paradigm, and spatial placement task to evaluate the mapping of social status to horizontal space. A total of 144 Chinese undergraduates participated in the research, wherein they were asked to place certain words indicating social status in either left or right box before or after the IRAP computer test. The results from the two measurements consistently showed that the mode of HIGH SOCIAL STATUS-LEFT and LOW SOCIAL STATUS-RIGHT (HLLR) had an advantage over HIGH SOCIAL STATUS-RIGHT and LOW SOCIAL STATUS-LEFT (HRLL), implying that the representation pattern of horizontal spatial metaphor of social status for the Chinese is HIGH SOCIAL STATUS-LEFT and LOW SOCIAL STATUS-RIGHT. However, the result convergence of the two measurements was not high, which suggests that embodiment effect has multiple characteristics and new specific experimental paradigms should be created to measure it.

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BACKGROUND: The discrepancy between actual and ideal body image is considered an index of body dissatisfaction and a risk factor for eating disorders. While discrepancy has been traditionally tested with figural drawing rating scales, in recent times the use of implicit measures has been explored. METHODS: This study employs the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) to examine actual-ideal body-size discrepancy in a sample of 130 Spanish college students, as well as its utility to predict symptoms of eating disorders and other body-image relevant measures. Participants completed the Contour Drawing Rating Scale (CDRS). The three smallest and the three largest contour drawings of the CDRS were used as target stimuli in two different IRAP tasks: one in combination with the sample phrases "I am" and "I am not" (that assessed implicit actual body image), another in combination with the phrases "I want to be" and "I don't want to be" (that assessed implicit ideal body image). After completing both IRAP tasks, participants completed explicit measures of body-image psychological inflexibility, body dissatisfaction, and symptoms of eating disorders. RESULTS: Results showed a small implicit bias towards thinness. Participants were faster in affirming than denying that they are thin and that they desire to be thin. They were also faster in affirming than denying that they are fat and that they want to be fat, but to a smaller extent than with thinness. Specifically, the implicit desire to be (or not be) fat emerged as an independent predictor of eating disorder symptoms, psychological inflexibility, and body dissatisfaction that significantly increased the predictive power of CDRS scores. CONCLUSIONS: These findings underscore the need for further research on specific body image implicit beliefs towards fatness, both in subclinical and clinical populations, in order to examine whether willingness to accept the idea that one can have a larger body size can be a suitable target for prevention and intervention in eating disorders.

Body dissatisfaction can be thought of as the discrepancy between actual and desired body size. This is typically measured with rating scales depicting a series of body silhouettes of increasing size, from extreme thinness to fatness. Respondents mark the points that match their current body size and the one they would ideally like to be (the more distance between both, the more body dissatisfaction). Like all self-reports, these scales are liable to self-presentation biases. Experimental procedures that require respondents to answer under time pressure (implicit measures) tap into more automatic reactions that are less amenable to deliberate manipulation. This study used one such procedure (the IRAP) to examine how rapidly participants identified themselves (or not) with pictures of underweight or overweight, and how rapidly they expressed a desire to be (or not) like such pictures. Participants did not show a clear discrepancy between their actual and their ideal body size with the IRAP. However, automatic reactions indicative of acceptance/rejection of the idea of becoming fatter, predicted the degree of body image distress as measured with different instruments. Unwillingness to accept this idea was associated with more severe symptoms of disordered eating.

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Research on implicit attitudes to body image has grown substantially in recent years. The extant evidence reveals an implicit weight bias in the general population that has generally been interpreted in terms of anti-fat attitudes. However, research with the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) shows that this bias appears to be driven by pro-slim rather than anti-fat implicit attitudes. Besides, the only IRAP study of this sort conducted in Spain found no evidence of such implicit weight bias (with similarly positive attitudes to thinness and fatness). Given the existing differences in body dissatisfaction (BD) among diverse cultural contexts, we predicted that discrepancies in findings about implicit weight bias might be related to differences in BD amongst the samples in the different studies. This study explores whether women with extreme scores in BD (High vs. Low) show different patterns of attitudes to female body shape. Spanish female college students with extreme scores in the Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ: high ≥ 104, percentile 80; low ≤ 52, percentile 20) completed an IRAP with pictures of overweight and underweight women as target stimuli and the words pleasant and unpleasant as labels. Participants also completed explicit ratings to the same stimuli and clinically relevant measures of body image related distress. Results showed an implicit weight bias only for women high in BD. While both groups showed equally positive implicit attitudes to thinness, only women with low BD showed implicit positive attitudes to fatness (and hence no bias). In turn, both groups presented a clear pro-thin/anti-fat explicit bias with positive ratings for underweight pictures and negative ratings for overweight pictures. The latter were stronger for the high BD group. Therefore, between-group differences were mainly driven by differences in attitudes to fatness (both implicit and explicit). Both implicit and explicit attitudes to fatness independently predicted eating disorders symptoms and other clinically relevant measures. These results are discussed in terms of their clinical implications.

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This experimental study explored the use of the implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP) for understanding the vertical spatial metaphor of power. In the classic IRAP procedure, we formed four sets of stimuli based on the relationship between power words (powerful and powerless words) and vertical position on a computer screen (upper or lower) that were either pro-metaphor (i.e., powerful-high, powerless-low) or anti-metaphor (i.e., powerful-low, powerless-high). Participants were then asked to judge whether the words were consistent or inconsistent with the set of instructions given to them. We found that the D irap scores of powerful words in an above vertical space and powerless words in a below vertical space were higher than zero. Furthermore, the D irap scores of the pro-metaphor stimuli were significantly greater than were those of the anti-metaphor stimuli. Vertical spatial position metaphor of power concepts was verified again by IRAP. These findings suggest that there is an established spatial metaphor for power, which we explain using relational frame theory. It is the first study to our knowledge to explore this metaphor using the IRAP, which overcomes the limitations of paradigms such as the implicit association test, and provides a better understanding of the mechanism of the metaphor.

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The stimulus equivalence paradigm presented operational criteria to identify symbolic functions in observable behaviors. When humans match dissimilar stimuli (e.g., words to pictures), equivalence relations between those stimuli are likely to be demonstrated through behavioral tests derived from the logical properties of reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity. If these properties are confirmed, one can say that those stimuli are members of an equivalence class in which each member is substitutable for the others. A number of studies, which have established equivalence classes comprised of arbitrary stimuli and pictures of faces expressing emotions, have found that valences of the faces affect the relatedness of equivalent stimuli. Importantly, several studies reported stronger relational strength in equivalence classes containing happy faces than in equivalence classes containing angry faces. The processes that may account for this higher degree of relatability of happy faces are not yet known. The current study investigated the dynamics of the symbolic relational responding involving facial expressions of different emotions by means of the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP). Participants were 186 undergraduate students who were taught to establish two equivalence classes, each comprising pictures of faces expressing either happiness (for one class) or a negative emotion (for another class), and meaningless words. The IRAP effect was taken as an index for the relational strength established between equivalent stimuli in the different equivalence classes. The dynamics of arbitrary relational responding in the course of the four IRAP trial types revealed that the participants exhibited a stronger IRAP effect in trials involving the happy faces and a weaker IRAP effect in trials involving the negative faces. These findings indicate that the happy faces had higher impact on the symbolic relational responding than the negative faces. The potential role played by the orienting function of happy vs. negative faces is discussed. By considering other studies that also reported a happiness superiority effect in other contexts, we present converging evidence for the prioritization of positive affect in emotional, categorical, and symbolic processing.

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The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP, Barnes-Holmes et al. in Psychol Rec 60:527-542, 2010) was utilized as a relatively new tool to measure implicit weight bias in first- and third-year medical students. To date, only two studies (Miller et al. in Acad Med 88:978-982, 2013; Phelan et al. in Med Educ 49:983-992, 2015) have investigated implicit weight bias with medical students and both have found pro-thin/anti-fat implicit attitudes, on average, using the Implicit Association Test (IAT, Greenwald and Banaji in Psychol Rev 102:4-27, 1995) as the assessment tool. The IRAP, however, allows for a deeper analysis of implicit attitudes with respect to both thin and fat in isolation, and it was found that medical students are, on average, actually both pro-thin and pro-fat, and on average are more pro-thin than pro-fat, as opposed to anti-fat. Additionally, it was found that medical students' implicit weight bias against fat/obese individuals improved over the first 2 years of medical training, and this improvement was specifically driven by improved implicit attitudes toward overweight and obese, while implicit attitudes toward thin remained constant over that time. The implications of more sensitive implicit bias assessment and specific changes in bias over time are discussed within the context of medical education curriculum development.

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BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Suicidal behaviour has proved to be difficult to predict, due in part to the particular limitations of introspection within suicidality. In an effort to overcome this, recent research has demonstrated the utility of indirect measures of "implicit" attitudes within the study of suicidality. However, research to date has focused predominantly on implicit self-evaluations and self-death associations. No work has examined implicit evaluations of death, despite the theoretical importance of such evaluations; "fearlessness of death" is central to both the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide and the Integrated Motivational-Volitional model of suicide.. METHODS: Twenty-three psychiatric patients with current suicidal ideation and twenty-five normative university students completed two versions of the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) that targeted evaluations of death. One task specified personal death (i.e., was self-focused) and the other targeted death in the abstract. RESULTS: Self-focused evaluations of death reliably distinguished between the two groups, correctly classifying 74% of cases, but evaluations of death in the abstract did not. The suicidal group produced specific biases indicating a rejection of the negativity of death. Results are consistent with the definition of suicidality as involving a self-focused wish to die.. LIMITATIONS: For ethical reason, suicidal behaviours were not assessed in the normative group. Groups were therefore not mutually exclusive. This may have decreased the specificity of the IRAP. CONCLUSIONS: Suicidal ideation is associated with an implicit "fearlessness of death". The utility of implicit death-evaluations should therefore be considered alongside self-evaluations and self-death associations in the future..

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We examined whether implicit measures of actual and ideal body image can be used to predict body dissatisfaction in young female adults. Participants completed two Implicit Relational Assessment Procedures (IRAPs) to examine their implicit beliefs concerning actual (e.g., I am thin) and desired ideal body image (e.g., I want to be thin). Body dissatisfaction was examined via self-report questionnaires and rating scales. As expected, differences in body dissatisfaction exerted a differential influence on the two IRAP scores. Specifically, the implicit belief that one is thin was lower in participants who exhibited a high degree of body dissatisfaction than in participants who exhibited a low degree of body dissatisfaction. In contrast, the implicit desire to be thin (i.e., thin ideal body image) was stronger in participants who exhibited a high level of body dissatisfaction than in participants who were less dissatisfied with their body. Adding further weight to the idea that both IRAP measures captured different underlying constructs, we also observed that they correlated differently with body mass index, explicit body dissatisfaction, and explicit measures of actual and ideal body image. More generally, these findings underscore the advantage of using implicit measures that incorporate relational information relative to implicit measures that allow for an assessment of associative relations only.

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This study examined implicit and explicit anxiety in individuals with epilepsy and psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNESs) and explored whether these constructs were related to experiential avoidance and seizure frequency. Based on recent psychological models of PNESs, it was hypothesized that nonepileptic seizures would be associated with implicit and explicit anxiety and experiential avoidance. Explicit anxiety was measured by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory; implicit anxiety was measured by an Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure; and experiential avoidance was measured with the Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire. Although both groups with epilepsy and PNESs scored similarly on implicit measures of anxiety, significant implicit-explicit anxiety discrepancies were only identified in patients with PNESs (p<.001). In the group with PNESs (but not in the group with epilepsy), explicit anxiety correlated with experiential avoidance (r=.63, p<.01) and frequency of seizures (r=.67, p<.01); implicit anxiety correlated with frequency of seizures only (r=.56, p<.01). Our findings demonstrate the role of implicit anxiety in PNESs and provide additional support for the contribution of explicit anxiety and experiential avoidance to this disorder.

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