Is the Implicit Association Test for Aggressive Attitudes a Measure for Attraction to Violence or Traumatization?

Author:

Bluemke Matthias12,Crombach Anselm3,Hecker Tobias4,Schalinski Inga3,Elbert Thomas3,Weierstall Roland5

Affiliation:

1. Department of Survey Design and Methodology, GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences, Mannheim, Germany

2. Psychological Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany

3. Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, Germany

4. Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Germany

5. MSH Medical School Hamburg, University of Applied Sciences and Medical University, Hamburg, Germany

Abstract

Abstract. Traumatic exposure is particularly devastating for those who, at a young age, have become combatants or experienced massive adversity after abduction by armed movements. We investigated the impact of traumatic stressors on psychopathology among war-affected young men of Northern Uganda, including former child soldiers. Adaptation to violent environments and coping with trauma-related symptoms often result in an increasing appetite for violence. We analyze implicit attitudes toward violence, assessed by an Implicit Association Test (IAT), among 64 male participants. Implicit attitudes varied as a function of the number of experienced traumatic event types and committed offense types. As the number of traumatic experiences and violence exposure increased, more appetitive aggression was reported, whereas the IAT indicated increasingly negative implicit attitudes toward aggression. The IAT was also the strongest predictor of cortisol levels. Diffusion-model analysis was the best way to demonstrate IAT validity. Implicit measures revealed the trauma-related changes of cognitive structures.

Publisher

Hogrefe Publishing Group

Subject

General Psychology,Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)

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