gradually fades away, that conflict will fade away as well. Limitations The IAT has been widely used as a measure for the balanced identity design because data obtained with this method revealed that predicted consistency patterns from Heider's theory were strongly apparent in the data for implicit measures by IAT but not in those for parallel explicit measures by self-report. The general explanation for why explicit measures by self-report did not reflect the predicted consistency patterns from Heider's theory was that self-report measures can go astray when respondents are either unwilling or unable to report accurately, and these problems could be more than enough to obscure the operation of consistency processes. There are, however, still limitations to the theory. For example, the balanced identity IAT measures only give group results rather than individual results, so it has its limitations when an analysis requires for individual pinpoint data to analyze, for instance, how balanced one's identity is relative to others'. It is hopeful, however, that researchers working with the Implicit Association Test (IAT) are trying hard to overcome challenges such as the one described above. Criticism and controversy The IAT has engendered some controversy in both the scientific literature and in the public sphere (e.g. in the Wall Street Journal). For example, it has been interpreted as assessing familiarity, perceptual salience asymmetries, or mere cultural knowledge irrespective of personal endorsement of that knowledge. A more recent critique argued that there is a lack of empirical research justifying the diagnostic statements that are given to the lay public. For instance, feedback may report that someone has a [minimal/slight/moderate/strong] automatic preference for [European Americans/African Americans], though critics contest the degree to which such conclusions can be drawn from an IAT. Proponents of the IAT have responded to these charges but the debate continues. According to an article in The New York Times, "there isn't even that much consistency in the same person's scores if the test is taken again". In addition, researchers have recently claimed that results of the IAT might be biased by the participant's lacking cognitive capability to adjust to switching categories, thus biasing results in favor of the first category pairing (e.g. pairing "Asian" with positive stimuli first, instead of pairing "Asian" with negative stimuli first). According to Jesse Singal, some of these issues have been settled in the research literature, but others continue to inspire debate among researchers and