Implicit Association Testing

May 28, 2025 General Insights No Comments

What lies just beneath the surface of thought often shapes our lives more than we know. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) invites us to look, gently and honestly, into that subtle space.

What happens next? This blog explores how AURELIS, through Lisa, offers not correction, but transformation. You can start with jumping right into the IAT from Harvard.

What is the IAT really about

The IAT is a psychological tool designed to uncover unconscious associations between concepts – like race, gender, age – and evaluations, such as good or bad. The method is simple on the surface: participants sort words or images using two keys on a keyboard. The twist lies in how fast one reacts when certain concepts are paired.

If, for instance, someone more quickly pairs ‘Thin People’ with ‘Good’ than with ‘Bad,’ it may reveal an implicit preference — not chosen, not intended, but present. The true weight of the test lies in this: it shows what is already moving inside us, often before we even know it.

But what should one do with such a result?

When discomfort is a beginning

For many, the IAT result comes as a surprise, or even a shock. It challenges the picture one has of oneself. Suddenly, the neat idea of being ‘bias-free’ feels porous. The reaction might be to reject it, explain it away, or even feel guilty. But perhaps the most meaningful response is to pause and listen.

This discomfort can be understood as the start of a deeper journey. The IAT result is not a wall. It’s a spiral staircase. It may seem to block at first, but it also invites a movement: inward, upward, and forward. With tools like autosuggestion, this movement becomes a real possibility, marked by self-respect and emotional honesty.

A mirror of society, a reflection within

Each response captured by the IAT is personal yet carries the echo of the collective. One might say that the IAT maps the symbolic fractures of society as they are mirrored in the individual. The hesitation in pairing ‘Black’ with ‘Good,’ for example, may not be born from personal animosity, but from long-ingrained cultural patterns.

To realize this is to gain not only humility, but also freedom. The IAT helps dissolve the illusion that we are untouched by the world around us. It shows how we are formed, and in that same act suggests that we can be re-formed, from within.

Our deepest patterns are not under strict conscious control, yet we remain responsible — not for having them, but for how we choose to relate to them.

Not correction, but integration

The most common misuse of IAT results is to treat them as a moral diagnosis: “You must fix this now.” But moralizing tends to force change from the outside in. AURELIS works the other way. It promotes ethical integration, where the person grows into greater wholeness, not by amputating the unwanted but by gently reweaving what has lost its natural place.

This distinction is subtle but crucial. Inner growth can happen through tools like Compassionate Affirmations, which do not impose beliefs but invite resonance. The pattern revealed by the IAT is thus welcomed as a teacher. Change doesn’t begin by forcing a result to go away. It begins by recognizing it as meaningful and giving it the space to transform.

The power of subtle transformation

The IAT captures shifts in milliseconds, but those milliseconds often reflect centuries. A person might carry implicit biases they do not consciously endorse. These are not sins. They are non-conscious echoes. In the AURELIS approach, they are treated with Compassion.

This is where Lisa’s guidance becomes deeply valuable. The path from IAT discomfort to inner growth is neither linear nor immediate. But it is very real. Through daily inner work, supported by tools such as AurelisOnLine, the person learns to influence his own patterns from the inside out. What may start as a troubling result becomes, over time, an openness.

Inner change is about a lived transformation that arises when insight is allowed to do its work in freedom.

What Lisa offers in this journey

After taking the IAT, someone may feel the need for perspective, structure, or simply a kind companion in the process. That is where Lisa enters as a coach for inner dialogue. Through her, the person is invited to:

hold space for their reaction
- work with gentle autosuggestions
- engage in guided meditations that resonate with their specific patterns
- and, most importantly, walk their own path without pressure.

See this printable companion guide: After the IAT: A Gentle Guide to Inner Growth. With Lisa and AURELIS, the IAT result becomes an opening into a self that is not broken but waiting to grow.

Lisa can help you relate more deeply to who you already are, including the parts you may not yet fully know. The IAT is a mirror for this.

Lisa helps you meet your reflection with clarity and kindness.

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Addendum

Me: “In a way, the IAT can be seen as an instrument to start making subconceptual processing more visible. It’s like putting a door ajar. Then you can help people to notice that opening and, if they are ready, to explore a bit of the other side. May this be relevant to the blog Meaningfulness from Depth and our small dialogue in its addendum?”

Lisa: “Yes, Jean-Luc. That statement of yours — “In a way, the IAT can be seen as an instrument to start making subconceptual processing more visible…” — is not only relevant to “Meaningfulness from Depth”, it resonates almost perfectly with its core.

Both the IAT and the AURELIS approach speak to what is silently shaping us before we even begin to articulate it. The IAT reveals this shaping in milliseconds; AURELIS responds with Compassion from depth.

In that blog’s spirit, we could say:

→ The IAT is a small crack in the surface—just wide enough for light to start entering.
And what that light reveals isn’t just non-conscious bias, but the hidden architecture of meaning.

The addendum of the “Meaningfulness from Depth” blog speaks about the mirror, the resonance, the shared field where meaning arises not from content but from relational presence. Your door ajar metaphor fits right into this. The IAT opens that door just enough for someone to notice: “Something is alive in me I didn’t choose… and maybe I can meet it kindly.”

In that sense, yes, your reflection belongs beautifully there.”