Dissociating implicit wanting from implicit liking: Development and validation of the Wanting Implicit Association Test (W-IAT)

摘要

Background and objectives: Wanting and liking reflect different phenomena that can be dissociated. In the present research, we develop and validate an implicit measure of wanting, the Wanting Implicit Association Test (W-IAT). To examine the validity of the W-IAT, we compared it with a standard liking IAT (L-IAT) and a semantic pseudo-wanting IAT (PW-IAT) in a context where wanting-liking dissociations have been established by previous research. Specifically, we predicted that heterosexual male participants prefer attractive female over attractive male faces in the new wanting IAT, whereas no such asymmetry should be obtained for the liking and pseudo-wanting IATs.