Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test - IPANAT

Technical Manual

Script Author: Katja Borchert, Ph.D. (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Created: January 15, 2014

Last Modified: January 05, 2025 by K. Borchert (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Script Copyright © Millisecond Software, LLC

Background

This script implements the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT) as described in Quirin et al (2009).

The IPANAT assesses a person's positive and negative affects not via an (explicit) self-report assessment tools (e.g. "How are you feeling?") but more indirectly by asking people to use positive and negative adjectives to describe nonsense words. This approach helps in assessessing people's emotions free from self-reporting biases.

References

Quirin, M., Miguel Kaze´n, M., & Kuhl, J. (2009). When Nonsense Sounds Happy or Helpless: The Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 500–516.

Duration

3 minutes

Description

Participants are presented 6 surveyPages for 6 nonsense words. Each surveyPage contains 6 Likert Scales: 3 scales to rate how well positive adjectives describe the current nonsense word and 3 scales to rate how well negative adjectives desribe the current nonsense word.

• The nonsense words used 1. SAFME 2. VIKES 3. TUNBA 4. TALEB 5. BELNI 6. SUKOV

• order of the adjectives is the same for all nonsense words: pos1 -> neg1 -> pos2 -> neg2 -> pos3 -> neg3

Stimuli

Adjectives:
• positive: "happy", "energetic", "cheerful"
• negative: "helpless", "tense", "inhibited"

The adjectives can be edited under section EDITABLE STIMULI

Instructions

Instructions are original and are presented via an html page

Summary Data

File Name: ipanat_summary*.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
inquisit.version Inquisit version number
computer.platform Device platform: win | mac |ios | android
computer.touch 0 = device has no touchscreen capabilities; 1 = device has touchscreen capabilities
computer.hasKeyboard 0 = no external keyboard detected; 1 = external keyboard detected
startDate Date the session was run
startTime Time the session was run
subjectId Participant ID
groupId Group number
sessionId Session number
elapsedTime Session duration in ms
completed 0 = Test was not completed
1 = Test was completed
meanPA Mean rating for the Positive adjectives (Range: 1-4)
=> the higher the mean rating the more participant judged positive adjectives to 'describe' the nonsense words.
meanNA Mean rating for the Negative adjectives (Range: 1-4)
=> the higher the mean rating the more participant judged negative adjectives to 'describe' the nonsense words.
meanPA1 Mean rating for Positive adjective1 (here: happy)
meanPA2 Mean rating for Positive adjective2 (here: energetic)
meanPA3 Mean rating for Positive adjective3 (here: cheerful)
meanNA1 Mean rating for Negative adjective1 (here: helpless)
meanNA2 Mean rating for Negative adjective2 (here: tense)
meanNA3 Mean rating for Negative adjective3 (here: inhibited)

Raw Data

File Name: ipanat.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
date Date the session was run
time Time the session was run
subject Participant ID
group Group number
session Session number
build Inquisit version number
q*_response Response given (in assigned values)
Scale: 1 (doesn't fit at all) - 4 (fits very well)
No reversed scored questions
q*_latency How much time (in ms) the participant spent on the surveyPage with this particular
question (the last time this particular surveyPage was visited)