Using the Implicit Relational Assesment Procedure (IRAP): Implicit Attitudes and Materialism

Abstract

Advertising may reinforce brief and immediate relational responses (BIRRS) of correspondence between “happiness” and “material wealth.” My research looked into the possibility of changing BIRRs associated with materialism through 10 minutes of training prior to taking the IRAP. I hypothesised that participants can become more or less materialistic through reinforcement of materialistic or anti-materialistic relational responding. Eighty-four participants were assigned to one of three groups, Materialistic, Anti-Materialistic, or Control, and received relevant training followed by an Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) and Materials Value Scale (MVS) survey. The IRAP was used to measure response latencies when individuals responded to pairs of stimuli consistent (e.g., happy/luxury) or inconsistent (e.g., happy/cheap) with materialistic attitudes. The MVS is a survey intended to measure materialism. Results showed that participants were faster to respond materialistically than they were to respond anti-materialistically, regardless of the type of training that they received. Regression analysis showed that participants who completed more Anti-Materialistic training blocks were predicted to score higher on the MVS. I concluded that, 10 minutes of training was not sufficient to affect BIRRs associated with materialism. Moreover, the results indicate that the relational network associated with “being materialistic” is complex and that there is not a clear “opposite” of materialism.

Experiment 2 was a focus group, designed to investigate participant’s thoughts regarding the stimuli used in Experiment 1. Participants from Experiment 1 were invited back for focus group sessions. The key findings from the focus group was that the stimuli used in Experiment 1 was not fully reflective of Anti-Materialism and the lack of context during the IRAP compounded into a different interpretation of “Anti-Materialism” for the participants. There is more to Anti-Materialism than the direct opposite of Materialism