Implicit and explicit mental illness attitudes

Negative attitudes towards people with mental illness contribute to the ongoing and debilitating stigma associated with mental illness in Australia. Measurement of these negative attitudes can be difficult due to problems with self-report, especially socially desirable responding patterns which tend to diminish the measured bias. The present study attempted to investigate and compare implicit and explicit measurements of mental illness attitudes in a sample of undergraduates enrolled in psychology subjects. The implicit measurements were taken using the implicit association test (IAT) and the explicit attitudes were measured via self-report. The IAT measurements indicated that the sample was unbiased, on average. While this is an encouraging finding, there are several potential explanations which must be explored in future research. It is possible that results from this sample are unrepresentative of the general population. It is also possible that implicit and explicit bias against people with mental illness are different constructs, and further that the implicit measurement does not tap into the kind of bias which has greatest relevance for stigma. This study may prompt further investigation into the construct validity of the implicit measure and encourage researchers to exercise caution when interpreting implicit findings using measures whose psychometric properties are unclear.