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More Complex than PreviouslyThought: New Insights into The OptimalAdministration of the Initial PreferenceTaskStefan Stieger a & Christoph Burger aa Department of Basic Psychological Research, University ofVienna, Vienna, AustriaVersion of record first published: 11 Apr 2012.

To cite this article: Stefan Stieger & Christoph Burger (2013): More Complex than PreviouslyThought: New Insights into The Optimal Administration of the Initial Preference Task, Self andIdentity, 12:2, 201-216

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2012.655897

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More Complex than Previously Thought: New

Insights into The Optimal Administration of the Initial

Preference Task

Stefan Stieger and Christoph Burger

Department of Basic Psychological Research, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

The Initial Preference Task (IPT) is based on the name-letter effect (NLE: individuals prefername over non-name letters) and is widely used for measuring implicit (automatic) self-esteem.However, its implicitness has been criticized because up to 85% of individuals can becomeaware of its self-relevant nature (i.e., recognizers; Krizan, 2008). The present experimentassessed differences in name-letter awareness across three different IPT administrations as wellas IPT scores across recognizers and non-recognizers. A more elaborated administration(incorporating symbols as filler items) significantly reduced name-letter awareness; further-more, IPT scores differed between recognizers (higher scores) and non-recognizers (smallerscores). Implications and limitations are discussed.

Keywords: Administration; Initial preference task; Implicit self-esteem; Name-letter effect;Recognizers.

The measurement of implicit (i.e., automatic) attitudes has dramatically increasedsince the publication of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, &Schwartz, 1998). The IAT is the flagship of these new measurement methods and hasbeen applied to many different domains within psychology such as aggression (e.g.,Uhlmann & Swanson, 2004) or anxiety (e.g., Egloff & Schmukle, 2002). Anotherhighly researched domain is self-esteem. Here, besides the IAT, another measure-ment method, the Initial Preference Task (IPT), is widely used. It is based on thename-letter effect (NLE; Kitayama & Karasawa, 1997; Nuttin, 1985, 1987), whichrefers to the preference of one’s name letters over non-name letters and has beenfound across different cultures and languages. This effect is heightened on the initialletters of the first and last name and has been proposed (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995)to be a measure of implicit self-esteem. This claim, although standing on vagueempirical ground (e.g., Buhrmester, Blanton, & Swann, 2011), has meanwhile beenwidely accepted and the IPT is currently, besides the IAT, the most frequently usedmeasure of implicit self-esteem (see Stieger, Voracek, & Formann, 2012, for a meta-analytic review).

Since its development, a lot of research has scrutinized the IPT from amethodological standpoint. Several algorithms have been proposed for itscomputation (see LeBel & Gawronski, 2009, for a review) and recently research

Received 25 August 2011; accepted 23 December 2011; first published online 13 April 2012.

Correspondence should be addressed to: Stefan Stieger, Department of Basic Psychological

Research, School of Psychology, University of Vienna, Liebiggasse 5, A-1010 Vienna, Austria.

E-mail: stefan.stieger@univie.ac.at

Self and Identity, 12: 201–216, 2013

http://www.tandfonline.com

ISSN: 1529-8868 print/1529-8876 online

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2012.655897

� 2013 Taylor & Francis

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has suggested using a duplicate administration to raise reliability (Rudolph,Schroder-Abe, Schutz, Gregg, & Sedikides, 2008) and to calculate the IPT scoresseparately for the first and last name initials (Stieger, Voracek et al., 2012). However,as brought up by Krizan (2008), one issue still remains to be resolved. It is the veryclaim of the IPT’s implicitness. Does it really measure implicit aspects of self-esteem?To fulfill the criteria of implicitness, the processes underlying the IPT’s outcomeshould be automatic, unconscious, efficient, or goal-independent (see De Houwer,Teige-Mocigemba, Spruyt, & Moors, 2009).1 Yet, Krizan’s (2008) study showedimpressively that a crucial number of participants (27–85% depending on howdirectly participants were asked—free, cued, or direct response) recognized theirinitials during the task. This is, of course, a serious shortcoming with majorimplications for the IPT’s validity and implicitness: if participants recognize theirinitials during the IPT, they are also able to directly influence the outcome of themeasure.2 Although recognizing one’s initials does not necessarily imply that allindividuals are also aware of the self-relevant nature of the task (i.e., some of themmight still think the task is about letter liking), it could introduce a potential sourceof unwanted (explicit) error variance. Thus, for some participants, processesunderlying the IPT might no longer be considered implicit in the sense of automaticor unconscious and could be easily faked.

Past research often tried to overcome this limitation by not revealing too muchinformation about the IPT’s rationale to participants during its administration.Another, more active strategy, involves using cover stories to distract theparticipants’ attention from the link between the IPT and their name. DeHart,Pelham, Fiedorowicz, Carvallo, and Gabriel (2011), for example, instructedparticipants that the aim of the task was to ‘‘develop stimuli for future studies oflinguistic and pictorial preferences.’’ Gregg and Sedikides’ (2010) approach was touse filler stimuli (i.e., ASCII symbols) to defuse suspicion and Krizan (2008) invitedparticipants to help the researcher with stimulus development. Unfortunately, so farno study has systematically evaluated the usefulness of different administrationtypes in preventing participants from becoming aware of their initials during the IPT(i.e., reducing the number of recognizers). However, substantive advances inresearch can only be expected once the methods are sufficiently well understood andstandardized.

Furthermore, although the NLE was found to be apparent for all letters of thefirst and last name (see Nuttin, 1985), research has predominantly used the initialsbecause they showed the highest effect size. Recently, however, Gregg and Sedikides(2010) have recommended using all letters again because this might be a more validmeasure of implicit self-esteem. In their study, they found that correlations of theIPT with narcissism were negative and in line with results of another indirect measureused in the same study (i.e., Go/No-go Association Task) when all letters of theparticipants’ names were used to calculate IPT scores. Yet, when they only used theinitials, the IPT’s correlation with narcissism was positive (albeit non-significantly)and in line with past IPT research (see Bosson et al., 2008, for a meta-analysis). Thisfinding can be interpreted as an indication that the IPT measures different aspects ofself-esteem depending on whether only the first name initials or all name letters areused. One possible explanation could be that the remaining letters of the first and lastname (as opposed to the initials) are less salient to the participants and therefore lesslikely to be (consciously) identified as their name letters during the IPT’s rating task.This may lead to a reduction of unwanted explicit (i.e., conscious, controlled)influences on the measurement outcome. Therefore, the IPT score based on

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non-initial name letters might be a more process-pure measure of implicit self-esteemthan the IPT based on initials only.

The Present Study

The aim of the present study was to present different types of administration of theIPT and evaluate them in terms of their potential to conceal the true purpose ofthe rating task. We conducted an experiment where participants were randomlyassigned to either a control condition (i.e., conventional administration) or to oneof two other administration types (‘‘typeface’’ and ‘‘symbol’’ administration) withincreased suspicion diffusion (Krizan, 2008) in order to assess whether theexperimental conditions lead to lower numbers of participants recognizing theirname letters during the IPT. In the first administration type (typeface adminis-tration), participants were instructed to judge letters on how much they liked theirtypeface. We hypothesized that focusing on the typeface of letters rather than onthe letters itself might reduce name-letter awareness. In the second administrationtype (symbol administration), we again tried to shift the participants’ focus awayfrom the letters themselves by using not only letters but also symbols (as filleritems) in the IPT’s rating task and by referring to both letters and symbols as‘‘symbols’’ in the instruction. The implementation of symbols might also have afurther advantage regarding participants’ motivation and acceptance of the IPT.Individuals usually find it difficult to rate how much they like letters because lettersare typically not associated with likeability in their everyday lives. Thus, the IPTmight be perceived as a rather meaningless task and lead to reduced commitmentand subsequently to lower data quality. However, participants usually do notexperience these problems when rating symbols (e.g., , ). Therefore using additionalsymbols during the IPT might not only reduce name-letter awareness, but alsoenhance the motivation to complete the IPT. Because of the above-mentionedreasons, we hypothesized that these new administration types should prove to besuperior to the conventional one.

A further objective of the present research was to assess the effect of name-letterawareness on the different measures of implicit self-esteem. Since Krizan (2008)found that recognizers exhibit higher IPT scores, we had the same expectations.Moreover, on a more exploratory level, the study aimed to examine relationsbetween the different measures of implicit self-esteem and explicit self-esteem.According to Krizan (2008), name-letter awareness should introduce unwantedexplicit influences. Following this line of reasoning, we expected that this effect, if itexists, should also be reflected in correlations with explicit self-esteem.3

Moreover, building on the work of Gregg and Sedikides (2010), we investigatedwhether the additional use of non-initial name letters has the potential to show amore complete picture and thus to lead to new insights regarding the measurementof implicit self-esteem. If the IPT score based on non-initial name letters is indeedless influenced by unwanted explicit influences than the IPT score based on initialletters, this should also be reflected in differences in correlations with explicit self-esteem.

In order to be able to make firm conclusions, we relied on the latestmethodological recommendations regarding the IPT. We used the recentlyrecommended I algorithm (LeBel & Gawronski, 2009), a duplicate administration,and separated the IPT scores for the first and last name (Stieger, Voracek, et al.,2012).

Administration of the IPT 203

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Method

Participants

The participants in the present study (N¼ 228; 58% women) were German-speakingvolunteers from all walks of life (Mage¼ 29.1 years, SD¼ 11.75, range: 12 to 82years). Participants were not remunerated for their participation. Regarding theirhighest educational level, 7.0% had completed primary education, 13.6% had anapprenticeship diploma, 57.5% completed secondary education, 13.2% possessed auniversity degree, and 8.8% stated having some other qualifications. In terms ofmarital status, 37.2% of participants were single, 39.0% in a relationship, 21.1%married, 1.8% divorced, and 0.9% widowed.

Materials

Initial Preference Task (IPT; Kitayama & Karasawa, 1997). The IPT is ameasure of implicit self-esteem based on the NLE (i.e., individuals rate their nameletters more favorably than non-name letters). Participants rated the letters A to Zand/or non-letter ASCII symbols (see design section below) on 7-point Likert scales(1¼ I don’t like at all; 7¼ I like). To raise reliability, duplicate administration wasused (Rudolph et al., 2008). Both administrations used a randomized list of letters/symbols whereas the order of letters/symbols in the second administration wasdifferent from that in the first administration.

Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES; Rosenberg, 1965; German form: von Collani& Herzberg, 2003). The RSES is a 10-item measure of explicit self-esteem using 4-point Likert scales (0¼ totally disagree; 3¼ totally agree; sample a¼ .82).

Demographics

Participants were asked to provide their sex, age, highest education, and currentrelationship status. In order to be able to calculate IPT scores, participants were alsoinstructed to state their first and last name initials. For the remaining letters of theirname, we presented participants with all letters of the alphabet in alphabetic sequenceassembled within a rectangle. Participants were instructed tomark all their name lettersexcept for their initials with a cross. This was done separately for their first and lastname.We chose this procedure to ensure best possible anonymitywhile at the same timebeing able to calculate IPT scores based on non-initials for both first and last name.

Design

Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups (control, typeface,symbol). In the control group, we used the standard administration for the IPT thathas been predominately used in past research with the instruction: ‘‘Please judge thefollowing letters on how much you like them. Do not think too much about yourjudgments, trust your gut impression.’’ (underlining appeared in text to stress thatparticipants’ liking of the letters—instead of the perceived beautifulness of theletters; see Sakellaropoulo & Baldwin, 2007—was of importance and that theyshould respond quickly; see Koole, Dijksterhuis, & van Knippenberg, 2001). Thefirst experimental group was called the typeface group because participants had to

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rate the liking of the typeface: ‘‘Please judge how much you like the followingtypeface by judging each letter separately. Do not think too much about yourjudgments, trust your gut impression.’’ The second experimental group was calledthe symbol group because participants were instructed to rate the liking of symbols.After reading the instruction ‘‘Please judge the following symbols on how much youlike them. Do not think too much about your judgments, trust your gutimpression.’’, they were presented with a list of letters from A to Z and 12 non-letter ASCII code symbols (e.g., , , e, D, 3

4). To ensure a balanced distribution ofsymbols among the letters, every second letter was followed by an ASCII codesymbol. The rationale behind this administration type was that drawing the attentionof the participants to the likeability of symbols might be more efficient in distractingthem from the true purpose of the IPT than just asking them to rate the likeability ofletters.

Immediately after the second administration of the IPT and before thedemographics section, participants were asked two short questions on a separatesheet. The wording of the question depended on the experimental manipulation. Thecontrol group was asked, ‘‘On the previous page, you were instructed to judge letters.Did you feel that any of the letters had a special meaning for you?’’ For the typefacegroup, the first appearance of the word ‘‘letters’’ was changed into ‘‘a typeface.’’ Forthe symbol group, both appearances of the word ‘‘letters’’ were exchanged by theword ‘‘symbols.’’ Participants had the possibility to state either yes or no. Ifparticipants responded affirmatively, they were asked to state the letters/symbolsthat had a special meaning for them during the rating procedure. This solicitationmethod is comparable to the cued response option used by Krizan (2008). Wepurposely refrained from directly asking participants, ‘‘Did you feel that your initialshad a special meaning for you?’’ because using this direct approach is—as Krizan(2008) pointed out—especially prone to contamination of demand characteristics.

Procedure

Upon agreement (informed consent), participants completed the IPT, the RSES,several other measures, which are not part of this study, and then the IPT again (i.e.,duplicate administration; participants were instructed that this is done to judge theconsistency of their answers, therefore they were instructed not to page back to thefirst administration of the IPT). Next, the question about the special meaning ofcertain letters/symbols was asked on a separate sheet of paper. Then they providedtheir demographics including their name letters. Finally, participants were thankedand debriefed.

Analysis

Ratings of participants who judged all letters equally likable were marked as invalidand were omitted from further analyses, as is standard practice (see LeBel &Gawronski, 2009). The typeface group produced significantly more invalid responsesthan the other two groups, w2(2)¼ 6.60, p¼ .04 (control group: 7%, typeface group:19%, symbol group: 9%).4 After exclusion of these invalid responses, the finaldataset comprised of n¼ 201 participants.

IPT scores were calculated by using an improved version of the recommended Ialgorithm, which controls for both individual response tendencies (i.e., liking allletters more/less) and general normative letter liking of certain letters (i.e., some

Administration of the IPT 205

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letters are preferred more than other letters; LeBel & Gawronski, 2009). Theconventional I algorithm as it was introduced by Baccus, Baldwin, and Packer (2004)uses a baseline that also includes non-initial name-letter ratings. Yet, since it hasbeen reported that the NLE (albeit attenuated) is also apparent in non-initial nameletters (e.g., Nuttin, 1985), this baseline cannot be regarded as a true baseline becauseit could also show a name-letter preference effect. Since it was also an aim of thecurrent study to look at a possible non-initial name-letter effect, we calculated anunbiased baseline score, which was based on non-name letters only.5 In addition,effects on the first name and last name were treated as separate measures (Stieger &Burger, 2010; Stieger, Voracek et al., 2012) resulting in four measures of implicit self-esteem: first-name initial (IPT-first-initial), last-name initial (IPT-last-initial), first-name non-initials (IPT-first-non-initial), and last-name non-initials (IPT-last-non-initial).

Furthermore, we analyzed the answers to the open question about which letters/symbols had a special meaning for participants during the IPT. If participants statedany letters that were identical to any of the letters of their first or last name (i.e.,name letters), these participants were coded as ‘‘recognizers.’’ Participants statingthat non-name letters or none of the presented symbols/letters had a special meaningfor them were coded as ‘‘non-recognizers.’’6

Results

Influence of Different Administration Types on the Recognition of One’s Name Letters

Using different administrations for the IPT had a significant effect on whether or notparticipants recognized their name letters in the IPT (see Table 1); w2(2)¼ 6.59,p¼ .04. In the control group almost equal proportions of participants wererecognizers and non-recognizers. In the typeface group, however, fewer recognizerswere found than in the control group, and in the symbol group the lowest number ofrecognizers was found (see Table 1). In general, recognizers did not differ from non-recognizers regarding their demographics (sex, age) and explicit self-esteem (detailedresults omitted). The results from Krizan (2008; cued response: recognizers¼ 43%)can be located between the control group and the typeface group. Krizan (2008) didnot use the standard administration (for the instruction see above) because headditionally informed participants that the study’s outcome was relevant to helpingthe researcher to develop stimuli.

Retest Reliabilities of the IPT Among Recognizers and Non-recognizers

Retest reliabilities of the IPT (i.e., correlation of the IPT scores from the first andsecond administration) were similar for recognizers and non-recognizers (see Table2). Nevertheless, three aspects are noteworthy: (1) overall, retest reliability washighest for the IPT-first-initial; (2) retest reliabilities of both IPT-first-initial andIPT-last-initial were slightly higher for non-recognizers than for recognizers (albeitnon-significantly; results from the z-test can be found in Table 2); and (3) in contrastto the IPT score based on initials, retest reliabilities for the IPT score based on theremaining non-initial name letters were substantially lower for non-recognizers thanfor recognizers (but again non-significantly). The finding that non-recognizers showa higher (although non-significant) retest reliability than recognizers when rating

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their initials seems to underline the stability and salience of the initial preference bias.However, this effect was not apparent for non-recognizers when rating the remainingnon-initial letters of their name, which suggests that IPT scores based on theremaining letters of one’s name are not as salient as those based on one’s initials.

Influence of Administration Type and Name-letter Awareness on the DifferentMeasures of Implicit Self-esteem

Two-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) with Experimental Group (control,typeface, symbol) and Name-letter Awareness (recognizer vs. non-recognizer) asbetween-subject factors and the four measures of implicit self-esteem as thedependent variable were calculated. We found no significant effect of ExperimentalGroup (all Fs5 2.99, ns). However, we found a significant influence of Name-letterAwareness onto all four different IPT scores (all Fs4 8.67, ps5 .004, Z24 .04).7 Allinteraction terms between both factors were non-significant (all Fs5 1.56, ns). Tosum up, the only factor which had an effect on the IPT score was name-letterawareness.

As can be seen from Table 3, NLEs8 were generally more pronounced for initialsthan for non-initial name letters. NLEs based on non-initial name letters were foundmore often in the control group than in the other two groups. Interestingly, non-recognizers showed NLEs on both of their initials in all groups (except for IPT-last-initial being non-significantly different from zero in the typeface group) althoughthese participants did not report having recognized their name letters during the IPTtask.

Recognizers had higher IPT-first-initial and IPT-last-initial effects than non-recognizers, independently of what kind of administration type they had beenassigned to (see Table 3). A somehow different picture appeared for the IPT scores ofnon-initial name letters. A significantly higher IPT score for recognizers was onlyfound in the control group but not in the typeface and symbol group. Moreover,NLEs for non-initials were not apparent in several experimental groups forrecognizers or in any of the groups for non-recognizers.

Correlations with Explicit Self-evaluations

In order to assess whether differences in name-letter awareness also lead todifferences in relations between the different measures of implicit self-esteem andexplicit self-esteem, implicit–explicit correlations were computed. As can be seenfrom Table 2 (last three columns), implicit–explicit correlations were either low ornon-significant, which is in line with past research (Hofmann, Gawronski,Gschwendner, Le, & Schmitt, 2005). Interestingly, for recognizers IPT-first-initial

TABLE 1 Frequencies of Recognizers and Non-recognizers Across the ThreeExperimental Groups

Experimental group Recognizers Non-recognizers Sum

Control group 32 (48%) 34 (52%) 66 (100%)Typeface group 23 (37%) 39 (63%) 62 (100%)Symbol group 20 (27%) 53 (73%) 73 (100%)

Administration of the IPT 207

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TABLE

2RetestReliabilityandIm

plicit–ExplicitCorrelationsSeparatedbyRecognizersandNon-recognizersAccompaniedbyFisher’s

z-TestforCorrelationDifferences

Retestreliability

Correlationwithexplicitself-esteem

Measure

ofim

plicit

self-esteem

Recognizers

(n¼75)

Non-recognizers

(n¼126)

Fisher’sz

Recognizers

(n¼75)

Non-recognizers

(n¼126)

Fisher’sz

IPT-first-initial

.60

.67

70.79

.19{

7.18*

2.52*

IPT-last-initial

.47

.49

70.18

.07

7.07

0.95

IPT-first-non-initial

.66

.52

1.51

.16

.01

1.02

IPT-last-non-initial

.62

.46

1.58

.16

.10

0.41

Notes:

{ p5

.10;*p5

.05.IPT¼InitialPreference

Task.Theterm

s‘‘recognizers’’and‘‘non-recognizers’’referto

participants

thatrecognized

ordid

not

recognizetheirnamelettersduringtheIPT’sadministration.Allcorrelationsfortheretest

reliabilityweresignificantwithp5

.001.

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TABLE

3IPT

ScoresSeparatedforEach

Experim

entalGroupandName-letter

AwarenessAccompaniedwithResultsfrom

t-Tests

Recognizers

Non-recognizers

Recognizersvs.non-recognizers

Experim

entalgroup

Measure

ofim

plicit

self-esteem

M(SD)

d(one-sample

t-test)

M(SD)

d(one-sample

t-test)

d(independent

t-test)

Controlgroup

IPT-first-initial

2.15(1.16)

1.85***

1.06(1.48)

0.72***

0.82**

IPT-last-initial

1.55(1.39)

1.11***

0.75(1.39)

0.54**

0.57*

IPT-first-non-initial

0.86(1.11)

0.77***

0.04(1.00)

0.04

0.78**

IPT-last-non-initial

0.55(0.73)

0.75***

0.13(0.83)

0.15

0.54*

Typeface

group

IPT-first-initial

1.74(1.19)

1.46***

0.65(1.50)

0.43*

0.80**

IPT-last-initial

1.05(1.06)

0.79**

0.26(1.17)

0.22

0.63*

IPT-first-non-initial

0.30(0.55)

0.54*

70.01(0.77)

70.01

0.46

IPT-last-non-initial

0.23(1.09)

0.21

70.15(0.74)

70.20

0.41

Symbolgroup

IPT-first-initial

1.82(1.01)

1.80***

0.75(1.74)

0.43**

0.75*

IPT-last-initial

1.38(1.24)

1.11***

0.62(1.55)

0.40**

0.54*

IPT-first-non-initial

0.39(0.88)

0.44{

0.02(0.87)

0.02

0.42

IPT-last-non-initial

0.15(0.75)

0.20

70.08(0.67)

70.12

0.33

Notes:IPT¼InitialPreference

Task;Cohen’sdfortheone-sample

case

refers

tod3

0 ,whichislower

thanCohen’sdforthetw

osample

case

(dtw

o-sample¼

d3

0 *�2

;Cohen,1988).

{ p5

.10;*p5

.05;**p5

.01;***p5

.001.Baselinefortheone-sample

t-test

was0.

Administration of the IPT 209

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was positively correlated with explicit self-esteem (although only marginallysignificant—probably due to the low subsample size of n¼ 75) while beingsignificantly negatively correlated for non-recognizers. The two correlations betweenIPT-first-initial and explicit self-esteem for the recognizers and the non-recognizerswere even significantly different from each other (see Table 2). This partly replicatesthe results of Krizan (2008)9, who also found a significant positive correlationbetween the IPT and explicit self-esteem for recognizers and a negative (albeit non-significant) correlation for non-recognizers.10

Discussion

The findings of the present study yielded important theoretical and practicalimplications for the application and further development of the IPT. First, as can beseen in Table 1, we found that a substantial number of participants indicatedrecognizing their name letters during the IPT, paralleling the findings of Krizan(2008). It is highly likely that recognizing one’s name letters during the rating taskintroduces unwanted error variance—some participants might have even been awareof the self-relevant nature of the IPT. Therefore, for a considerable group ofparticipants, the IPT scores might not be regarded as implicit in the sense ofcapturing content that participants were unaware of. Thus, it can be concluded thatIPT scores also capture, at least partly, variance that directly stems from consciousattitudes, particularly for those participants who indicated being aware of their nameletters.

Second, we found that using a more elaborated administration type of the IPT(i.e., using non-letter filler symbols and referring to letters and non-letters as symbolsand not as letters) resulted in a significantly lower number of participants reportingbeing aware of their name letters during the task than in the control group. Theadministration type that referred to a typeface instead of letters was not as successfulas the symbol administration since it led to more recognizers and to more invalidresponses (i.e., judging all letters equally likable). Furthermore, while differentadministration types themselves did not substantially affect the size of the IPT score,different name-letter awareness levels (recognizers vs. non-recognizers) undoubtedlydid—recognizers consistently had higher IPT scores above all groups (although therewere no differences in explicit self-esteem between the two groups). These resultsquite clearly further strengthen the conclusion that the IPT also captures variancedirectly stemming from explicit sources. However, NLEs for initials were also foundamong non-recognizers, indicating that being aware of one’s name letters during theIPT is not a necessary prerequisite for participants to show an NLE (see Table 3).Yet, the size of the NLEs that have been found in previous research not controllingfor name-letter awareness seems very likely to have been overestimating the ‘‘real’’NLE. Furthermore, whereas the NLE for non-initial letters was still apparent forrecognizers (albeit attenuated and only in the less elaborated administration types), itdid not manifest at all for non-recognizers regardless of administration type. Thissuggests that non-initial NLEs are almost exclusively driven by explicit aspects.Thus, the calculation of IPT scores for all name letters or at least for all non-initialname letters might not be as promising as anticipated in previous studies (e.g., Gregg& Sedikides, 2010). However, future research is needed to replicate and furtheranalyze this in order to establish its certainty.

Third, previous research showed that first and last name initials seem to measuredifferent aspects of implicit self-esteem and should therefore be treated as different

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measures (Stieger & Burger, 2010; Stieger, Formann, & Burger, 2011; Stieger,Voracek et al., 2012). The current study extends the findings of prior studiesconcerning differences between the two measures by revealing higher retestreliabilities for the first name initial compared to the last name initial (non-recognizers: rtt¼ .67 vs. .49; z¼ 2.15, p¼ .03). Furthermore, correlations withexplicit self-esteem were only found for the first name initial. Thus, building acompound measure probably blurs distinct effects and might therefore even becounterproductive.

Fourth, the findings of the current study made it clear that differentadministration types can lead to different results. Similar results have already beenfound for the anchors of the Likert scales as it was shown to make a differencewhether participants were asked to rate letters for their likeability or theirbeautifulness (Sakellaropoulo & Baldwin, 2007; Stieger, Voracek et al., 2012).Furthermore, it was found that including the additional instruction ‘‘trust your gutimpression’’ influences the outcome (Koole et al., 2001). Also the order ofpresentation of additional materials has been demonstrated to be of relevance as itmakes a difference whether a measure of explicit self-esteem is completed byparticipants before or after the IPT (see Krizan & Suls, 2008, for a meta-analysis).Thus, the present study corroborates that the IPT is highly sensitive to differences inits instruction and administration. This sensitivity leads to the unfortunate fact thatresults from studies using different administration types of the IPT are probablyhardly comparable and might lead to conflicting conclusions. This underlines theurgent need for identifying an optimal administration type and establishing it incurrent research practice.

Finally, the above-mentioned sensitivity is also noticeable when the implicit–explicit correlation is compared between recognizers and non-recognizers. Althoughpast research predominantly found small positive correlations of explicit self-esteemand implicit self-esteem (e.g., Bosson, Swann, & Pennebaker, 2000), in the currentstudy, when recognizers and non-recognizers were analyzed separately, we found amarginally significant small positive correlation for recognizers (i.e., parallelingprevious findings), but a significant low negative correlation for non-recognizers (i.e.,contrasting previous findings; but see Krizan, 2008). These findings seem to fit well tothe above-mentioned interpretation: in the group of recognizers, unwanted explicitaspects (e.g., social desirability bias) might spill over into the IPT score and thus‘‘overwrite’’ implicit with explicit aspects. This might eventually lead to higherpositive correlations between explicit and alleged implicit outcomes. Preventingname-letter awareness might, on the other hand, lead to a purer measure of implicitself-esteem and might therefore reduce the small positive correlation (that has beenestablished in previous research) even more. The present study shows that this smallpositive correlation might even be reversed and become negative. Under theassumption that non-recognizers should reveal fewer explicit aspects during the taskbecause they are not aware of the rationale behind the IPT, these results areinteresting and might spark discussion and encourage further research in order to befully explained.

Besides the differences in the directions of the correlation between recognizersand non-recognizers, we think that it is particularly the established difference of thetwo correlations (i.e., significant Fisher’s z; see Table 2) that is of centralimportance. This difference clearly shows that recognizing one’s initials during theIPT changes the correlation with explicit self-esteem (as compared to non-recognizers). It could be interpreted as indicating that for non-recognizers the IPT

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might measure less unwanted error variance and thus more implicit aspects of self-esteem as compared to recognizers (see Gawronski, LeBel, Peters, & Banse, 2009,for a discussion). These findings, however, call for replication and clarification infuture studies.

Limitations and Future Outlook

The current study also had some limitations. First, the statistical power of thesample was too small to further analyze possible effects of different administrationtypes on the implicit–explicit correlation. Gawronski and colleagues (2009) pointedout that for concluding that a measure covers more implicit aspects (and lessexplicit aspects or systematic variance) it is not enough to register changes in scoremeans, but also changes in correlations with other measures of explicit and implicitattitudes. Thus, although it seems to be straightforward from a theoreticalperspective that not recognizing one’s name letters during the IPT leads to a lowerprobability of becoming aware of the underlying aim of the IPT, in the case of thecurrent study we cannot definitively conclude that the IPT measures a higheramount of implicit self-esteem for non-recognizers. We can only observe that in thesymbol administration, fewer participants had become aware of their name lettersduring the IPT’s rating task and that for non-recognizers IPT scores were smaller.This needs to be further examined and empirically verified in further research usinglarger samples.

Second, asking participants for all their name letters separately for their first andlast names while at the same time maintaining the participants’ privacy was a seriouschallenge. Although we took great efforts to maintain best possible anonymity underthe present conditions (i.e., having the participants mark their name letters in arectangle containing all the letters of the alphabet in alphabetic sequence),participants (especially those with short first and last names) sometimes expressedprivacy concerns. Thus, this would be another reason against using non-initial nameletters in the IPT.

Third, our approach for distinguishing recognizers from non-recognizers was arather liberal strategy: if participants mentioned that a letter that was also part oftheir name had a special meaning for them, they were labeled as recognizers.However, it is also possible that non-recognizers mentioned letters that were onlyaccidentally name letters and that they did it for another reason than for them beinga part of their name (e.g., mentioning A because they like getting As at school). Yet,we intentionally chose this strategy because we were particularly interested in thegroup of non-recognizers and this strategy allowed us to be reasonably sure that theidentified non-recognizers were only participants that were really unaware of the self-relevant aspect during the task. Thus, this approach allowed us to make strongerclaims regarding non-recognizers, because their scores were not impacted by name-letter awareness. Furthermore, this strategy is comparable to present computationsof the IPT score (i.e., participants rating their name letters more favorably areattested to have higher implicit self-esteem, although it is also possible that they didit for another—unconscious—reason than for the letter’s belonging to their name;see Krizan, 2008). However, a possible consequence of this strategy could be that thegroup of recognizers contained also some non-recognizers, which again could be afurther reason that the small positive correlation between implicit and explicit self-esteem in the group of recognizers was only marginally significant (the other onebeing the small size of the recognizer subsample).

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Fourth, the setting (i.e., instruction, duplicate administration of the IPT) of thisexperiment might have had some influence on the outcome measures. For example,participants were asked whether any letters/symbols had a special meaning for themafter the second administration (rather than after the first or after bothadministrations times). This might have slightly raised the number of recognizersbecause participants had a ‘‘second chance’’ to think about the nature of the IPT(i.e., they were exposed to it twice before being asked). However, we used thisstrategy on purpose because asking the question after the first administration wouldhave raised the probability of getting aware of the IPT’s rationale during the secondadministration even more, because participants would have been sensitized to aheightened awareness towards special meanings of letters. This would have almostcertainly had a negative influence on the retest reliability of the IPT due to inflatednumbers of recognizers at the second administration.

Furthermore, the instruction that the duplicate administration of the IPT wasdone to judge consistency might have encouraged participants to focus on consistentresponses, which might in turn have heightened name-letter awareness during bothadministration times and thus heightened retest reliabilities. Nevertheless, there aregood reasons to assume that this effect, if existent, is only small because our retestreliabilities are in line with previous research not using this additional consistencyinstruction (e.g., Stieger, Preyss, & Voracek, 2011).

Taken together, based on the results of the present study, future administrationsof the IPT should integrate non-letter symbols as filler items into the stimulusmaterial that has to be rated by participants. Furthermore, the instruction shouldrefer to both letters and non-letter symbols as symbols in order to defuse suspicionand to divert participants’ attention from becoming aware that the stimuli alsoinclude their name letters. A more optimal administration should also include aquestion asking the participants if any of the symbols had a special meaning for themand if they responded affirmatively, asking them to state the symbols. A fruitfulapproach for future research would be refining the process of identifying recognizers(see Krizan, 2008, for different approaches). Furthermore, it could be useful tocombine the symbol administration with the typeface administration. A repeatedadministration of letters/symbols in different typefaces might add more plausibilityto the cover story that it really is the typeface and not the letters that is the subject ofthe study. This composite approach might further reduce the number of recognizersand heighten reliability through multiple administrations of initial letters. Finally, wethink that it would be worthwhile for future studies to analyze the implicit–explicitcorrelation of self-esteem for non-recognizers in more detail (e.g., in larger samplesand with additional measures of explicit and implicit self-esteem) in order to be ableto empirically confirm that the presented symbol administration leads to a moreprocess-pure measure of implicit self-esteem.

Notes

1. In line with De Houwer et al. (2009), we use the terms direct and indirect to refer tomeasurement procedures and the terms explicit and implicit to refer to theirmeasurement outcomes. For example, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg,

1965) is a direct measure of self-esteem because it directly asks participants about theirself-esteem. The IPT, in contrast, is an indirect measure of self-esteem becauseparticipants are not asked directly to provide information about their self-esteem but

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rather indirectly to rate the liking of letters. However, it is important to note thatindirect measurement does not necessarily capture only implicit (i.e., automatic,

unconscious) aspects and direct measurement procedures do not necessarily assessonly explicit (i.e., conscious, deliberative) aspects.

2. Indeed, Krizan (2008) found that participants recognizing their initials during the

rating process (so-called recognizers) consistently showed substantially higher name-letter effects as compared to non-recognizers.

3. It should be stressed that in the present study implicit–explicit correlations are not

employed to establish the validity of the different measures of implicit self-esteem (i.e.,correlations alone would be hardly sufficient), but to establish whether experimentalmanipulations also lead to changes in levels of explicitness/implicitness of themeasures.

4. Participants in the symbol group had to do more ratings than in the remaining twogroups because they additionally had to rate symbols. For comparability reasons, weonly analysed the letters for validity; we also used only the letters and not the symbols

for the calculation of the respective IPT scores.5. This improved algorithm can be requested from the authors on demand.6. In contrast to our study, Krizan (2008) only identified users stating their initial letters

as recognizers, whereas we looked at all name letters (including non-initial letters).Yet, it turned out that only seven participants stated letters matching their non-initialletters and not their initials. Therefore it can be concluded that almost all recognizers

stated that their initial (and not their non-initial) name letters had a special meaningfor them during the IPT.

7. Eta-squared around and lower than .01 are considered as small, around .06 asmedium, and around or higher than .14 as large (Cohen, 1988).

8. Throughout the remainder of this article, we will use the term name-letter effect (NLE)for IPT scores that are significantly different from zero, representing the phenomenonthat individuals are significantly preferring name letters to non-name letters.

9. It should be noted that Krizan (2008) used the Self-Liking Self-Competence scale(Tafarodi & Swann, 1995) for measuring explicit self-esteem whereas we used theRSES.

10. All analyses were also calculated with other published (but not recommended)algorithms (see LeBel & Gawronski, 2009, for a review of algorithms). Basically, thealgorithm-specific results were homogeneous, except for some single significantdifferences compared to the used I algorithm, which might be due to inflated Type-I

error rates because of the large number of significance tests. All in all, there was nosingle algorithm showing substantial differences to the I algorithm throughout allanalyses.

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