Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Toward Mainstream and BDSM Sexual Practices and Their Relation to Interviewer Behavior: an Analogue Study

The present study examined participants' implicit and explicit attitudes toward mainstream and BDSM (bondage and discipline/dominance and submission/sadism and masochism) sexual terms using the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) and several questionnaires and investigated the relationship between scores on these measures and participant behavior toward a BDSM-labeled and a non-BDSM-labeled confederate during an interviewing task. Twenty-one participants, who were either graduate psychology students or practicing clinicians, completed the study. Results were consistent with previous research (Stockwell, Walker, & Eshleman, The Psychological Record, 60(2), 307-324, 2010) in that responses on both the IRAP and Visual Analogue Scales showed an acceptance of mainstream sexual terms and unfavorable responding to BDSM terms; in contrast, Likert-scale questionnaire responses generally reflected favorable attitudes toward people who practice BDSM. IRAP scores were positively correlated with differences in smiling across the two interview conditions; that is, participants with anti-BDSM responding on the IRAP smiled significantly less while interviewing the BDSM-labeled confederate than when they interviewed the non-BDSM confederate. No other differences in interviewing behavior were observed or correlated with IRAP responding, suggesting that implicit attitudes may not be a reliable predictor of participant behavior during interviews of individuals labeled as practicing BDSM.