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Reply to ‘Temporal stability in measurements matters only for stable constructs’

Nature Reviews Psychology volume 4, page 362 (2025)Cite this article

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We thank Moreau (Moreau, D. Temporal stability in measurements matters only for stable constructs. Nat. Rev. Psychol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00435-z; 2025)1 for his comments on our Perspective (Corneille, O. & Gawronski, B. Self-reports are better measurement instruments than implicit measures. Nat. Rev. Psychol. 3, 835–846; 2024)2 and appreciate the opportunity to respond to his comments.

In our article, we argued that six alleged advantages of implicit measures over self-reports were unsubstantiated, and that self-reports had three clear advantages. Importantly, our Perspective focused on a particular category of performance-based tasks commonly referred to as ‘implicit measures’ (for example, the implicit association test)3. Our arguments were not meant to generalize to all performance-based tasks or all instruments that use response times. We recommended caution when interpreting outcomes from implicit measures and called for more sophisticated use of self-reports, using structural-fit procedures4 and multinomial modelling5. Moreau expressed concerns that our article misrepresents the strengths and limitations of implicit measures and self-reports and that our recommendations might be misguided. Here, we respond to four central points of Moreau’s commentary.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychological Sciences Research Institute, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Olivier Corneille

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Bertram Gawronski

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  1. Olivier Corneille
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  2. Bertram Gawronski
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Correspondence to Olivier Corneille.

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Corneille, O., Gawronski, B. Reply to ‘Temporal stability in measurements matters only for stable constructs’. Nat Rev Psychol 4, 362 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-025-00436-y

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