The effect of implicitly incentivized faking on explicit and implicit measures of doping attitude
- The Implicit Association Test (IAT) aims to measure participants' automatic evaluation of an attitude object and is useful especially for the measurement of attitudes related to socially sensitive subjects, e.g. doping in sports. Several studies indicate that IAT scores can be faked on instruction. But fully or semi-instructed research scenarios might not properly reflect what happens in more realistic situations, when participants secretly decide to try faking the test. The present study is the first to investigate IAT faking when there is only an implicit incentive to do so. Sixty-five athletes (22.83 years +/- 2.45; 25 women) were randomly assigned to an incentive-to-fake condition or a control condition. Participants in the incentive-to-fake condition were manipulated to believe that athletes with lenient doping attitudes would be referred to a tedious 45-minute anti-doping program. Attitudes were measured with the pictorial doping brief IAT (BIAT) and with the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale (PEAS). A one-way MANOVAThe Implicit Association Test (IAT) aims to measure participants' automatic evaluation of an attitude object and is useful especially for the measurement of attitudes related to socially sensitive subjects, e.g. doping in sports. Several studies indicate that IAT scores can be faked on instruction. But fully or semi-instructed research scenarios might not properly reflect what happens in more realistic situations, when participants secretly decide to try faking the test. The present study is the first to investigate IAT faking when there is only an implicit incentive to do so. Sixty-five athletes (22.83 years +/- 2.45; 25 women) were randomly assigned to an incentive-to-fake condition or a control condition. Participants in the incentive-to-fake condition were manipulated to believe that athletes with lenient doping attitudes would be referred to a tedious 45-minute anti-doping program. Attitudes were measured with the pictorial doping brief IAT (BIAT) and with the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale (PEAS). A one-way MANOVA revealed significant differences between conditions after the manipulation in PEAS scores, but not in the doping BIAT. In the light of our hypothesis this suggests that participants successfully faked an exceedingly negative attitude to doping when completing the PEAS, but were unsuccessful in doing so on the reaction time-based test. This study assessed BIAT faking in a setting that aimed to resemble a situation in which participants want to hide their attempts to cheat. The two measures of attitude were differentially affected by the implicit incentive. Our findings provide evidence that the pictorial doping BIAT is relatively robust against spontaneous and naive faking attempts. (B) IATs might be less prone to faking than implied by previous studies.…
Author details: | Wanja WolffORCiDGND, Sebastian SchindlerORCiDGND, Ralf BrandORCiDGND |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-409854 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.25932/publishup-40985 |
ISSN: | 1866-8364 |
Title of parent work (German): | Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe |
Subtitle (English): | when athletes want to pretend an even more negative attitude to doping |
Publication series (Volume number): | Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe (524) |
Publication type: | Postprint |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2019/02/12 |
Publication year: | 2015 |
Publishing institution: | Universität Potsdam |
Release date: | 2019/02/12 |
Tag: | IAT; association test; metaanalysis; performance; predictive-validity; social cognition; symptom validity tests |
Issue: | 524 |
Number of pages: | 10 |
Source: | PLOS ONE 10 (2015) 4, Art. e0118507 DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0118507 |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät |
DDC classification: | 5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 50 Naturwissenschaften / 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik |
6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit | |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access |
Grantor: | Public Library of Science (PLOS) |
License (German): | CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |
External remark: | Bibliographieeintrag der Originalveröffentlichung/Quelle |