Using the implicit association test and the implicit relational assessment procedure to measure attitudes towards meat and vegetables in vegetarians and meat-eaters

The current study aimed to assess the implicit attitudes of vegetarians and non-vegetarians towards meat and vegetables, using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP). Both measures involved asking participants to respond, under time pressure, to pictures of meat or vegetables as either positive or negative stimuli. Response latency data gathered from both the IAT and the IRAP discriminated at a statistically significant level between vegetarians and meat-eaters. Furthermore, both measures correlated with some features of the explicit self-report measure that was employed in the study. The implicit measures also provided similarly small but statistically significant increases in predictive validity over the explicit measures.