Implicit beliefs about self and nature: Evidence from an IAT game

Recent psychological research has examined the beliefs that individuals hold about their relationship with the natural world. This article builds on the previous literature on connectedness with nature and we introduce a new game version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT), known as FlexiTwins. The game is intended to facilitate research using the IAT and provides a flexible platform for measuring implicit associations. In this paper, we report three studies in which we use the game to measure self-nature associations. Study I reports the development and validation of FlexiTwins with a college sample. Study 2 further validates the game using a known-groups sample of environmental activists. Finally, Study 3 examines the implicit connectedness of a sample of 30 grade school children. Across all three studies, we find good evidence for reliability, as well as theoretically meaningful results. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.