New methods of measuring personality: implicit or indirect measures

• Main Author: Tina Kavčič
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Slovenian Psychologists' Association 2010-05-01
• Series: Psihološka Obzorja
• Subjects: implicit measures; indirect measures; personality; attitudes
• Online Access: http://psiholoska-obzorja.si/arhiv_clanki/2010_1/kavcic.pdf

The paper presents a new family of psychological measures, developed in the last decade with the aim of measuring unconscious processes that, in addition to the conscious processes, contribute to the prediction of individual's behaviour. The purpose of the so-called implicit or indirect measures is also overcoming the main limitations of existing psychological instruments (especially questionnaires), i.e. high possibility of deformation due to social desirability biases. These procedures include the use of computers and are generally based on comparison of participants' reaction times in different blocks of test tasks. Some of the most frequently used measures and their variations are described and their psychometric properties are discussed, with special focus on predictive validity. The basic assumption is that implicit measures are especially predictive of spontaneous, automatic behaviour and explicit ones contribute mostly to the prediction of deliberate, intentional behaviour, though some studies show other predictive models to be possible as well. In addition, the contribution presents areas of psychology research in which implicit measures have already been used and offers suggestions for future research.