Alexithymia increases effects of ego-depletion.

Alexithymia is associated with deficiencies to identify, describe and express emotions, paucity of fantasies and an externally oriented cognitive style. The current studies provide evidence that alexithymia is also related to self-regulation processes and exacerbates effects of ego-depletion, a state where self-regulation resources are reduced due to previous acts of self-regulation. In Study 1, ego-depletion effects of a handgrip task on pain tolerance were increased by alexithymia. In Study 2, an emotion suppression task showed stronger effects of ego-depletion on a Stroop task in participants high rather than low in alexithymia, but only after suppression of emotions induced by negative and not positive pictures. The results imply that alexithymia increases susceptibility to ego-depletion effects, that consumption of self-regulatory resources has stronger consequences for people high in alexithymia and that they should experience special support in ways to replenish self-regulation resources.

Overweight people have low levels of implicit weight bias, but overweight nations have high levels of implicit weight bias.

Although a greater degree of personal obesity is associated with weaker negativity toward overweight people on both explicit (i.e., self-report) and implicit (i.e., indirect behavioral) measures, overweight people still prefer thin people on average. We investigated whether the national and cultural context - particularly the national prevalence of obesity - predicts attitudes toward overweight people independent of personal identity and weight status. Data were collected from a total sample of 338,121 citizens from 71 nations in 22 different languages on the Project Implicit website (https://implicit.harvard.edu/) between May 2006 and October 2010. We investigated the relationship of the explicit and implicit weight bias with the obesity both at the individual (i.e., across individuals) and national (i.e., across nations) level. Explicit weight bias was assessed with self-reported preference between overweight and thin people; implicit weight bias was measured with the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The national estimates of explicit and implicit weight bias were obtained by averaging the individual scores for each nation. Obesity at the individual level was defined as Body Mass Index (BMI) scores, whereas obesity at the national level was defined as three national weight indicators (national BMI, national percentage of overweight and underweight people) obtained from publicly available databases. Across individuals, greater degree of obesity was associated with weaker implicit negativity toward overweight people compared to thin people. Across nations, in contrast, a greater degree of national obesity was associated with stronger implicit negativity toward overweight people compared to thin people. This result indicates a different relationship between obesity and implicit weight bias at the individual and national levels.

National differences in gender-science stereotypes predict national sex differences in science and math achievement.

About 70% of more than half a million Implicit Association Tests completed by citizens of 34 countries revealed expected implicit stereotypes associating science with males more than with females. We discovered that nation-level implicit stereotypes predicted nation-level sex differences in 8th-grade science and mathematics achievement. Self-reported stereotypes did not provide additional predictive validity of the achievement gap. We suggest that implicit stereotypes and sex differences in science participation and performance are mutually reinforcing, contributing to the persistent gender gap in science engagement.

Assessment of implicit personality self-concept using the implicit association test (IAT): concurrent assessment of anxiousness and angriness.

This study explored the psychometric properties of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) when it is employed for the assessment of two personality traits within one sample. The sequence of an anxiousness and an angriness IAT was counterbalanced across 100 participants and the IATs' predictive validity for anxious versus angry behaviour after emotion inductions was examined and compared to direct self-report measures. The anxiousness IAT added incremental validity over direct measures for the prediction of anxious behaviour. The angriness IAT was affected by an order effect. When the angriness IAT was completed after the anxiousness IAT both tests correlated with r=.46 whereas they were not significantly correlated when the angriness IAT was completed first. Direct anxiousness and angriness measures were uncorrelated. Implications for the assessment of multiple implicit personality self-concept dimensions are discussed.

Employing automatic approach and avoidance tendencies for the assessment of implicit personality self-concept: The implicit association procedure (IAP).

A new chronometric procedure, the Implicit Association Procedure (IAP), was adapted to assess the implicit personality self-concept of shyness. A sample of 300 participants completed a shyness-inducing role play and, before or after the role play, a shyness IAP, a shyness Implicit Association Test (IAT), and direct self-ratings. The experimental group was instructed to fake nonshyness. The control group did not receive this instruction. IAT and IAP were unaffected by position effects, and were less susceptible to faking than direct self-ratings with regard to mean levels and correlates. Under faking, correlations between direct and indirect measures decreased, and direct but not indirect measures showed higher correlations with social desirability and lower correlations with observed shyness. Despite many similarities, the true correlation between IAT and IAP was estimated only .61, indicating high method-specific variance in both procedures. The findings suggest that indirect measures are more robust against faking than traditional self-ratings but do not yet meet psychometric criteria for practical assessment purposes.