The study you just completed included both a self-report and an implicit measure of well-being. The self-report measure of well-being was the Satisfaction With Life Scale, and the implicit measure was an Implicit Association Test (IAT) that compared the strength of automatic mental associations. In this version of the IAT, we investigated associations between the self-concept and the concepts of happiness and sadness.

The idea behind the IAT is that concepts with very closely related (vs. unrelated) mental representations are more easily and quickly responded to as a single unit. For example, if "me" and "happy" are strongly associated in one's mind, it should be relatively easy to respond quickly to this pairing by pressing the "E" or "I" key. If "me" and "happy" are NOT strongly associated, it should be more difficult to respond quickly to this pairing. By comparing reaction times on this test, the IAT gives a relative measure of how strongly associated the two categories (Me, Not Me) are to mental representations of "happy" and "sad". Each participant receives a single score, and your score appears below.

Positive scores indicate that "happiness" associations with the self-concept are stronger (i.e., faster) than "sadness" associations, and a negative score indicates the opposite.

People often have questions about interpreting their scores on an IAT test. For answers to some of the most Frequently Asked Questions, please see this FAQ page hosted by Project Implicit. For more general information on the test, see this wikipedia article.

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