Implicit and explicit attitudes predict smoking cessation: Moderating effects of experienced failure to control smoking and plans to quit.

The current study tested implicit and explicit attitudes as prospective predictors of smoking cessation in a Midwestern community sample of smokers. Results showed that the effects of attitudes significantly varied with levels of experienced failure to control smoking and plans to quit. Explicit attitudes significantly predicted later cessation among those with low (but not high or average) levels of experienced failure to control smoking. Conversely, however, implicit attitudes significantly predicted later cessation among those with high levels of experienced failure to control smoking, but only if they had a plan to quit. Because smoking cessation involves both controlled and automatic processes, interventions may need to consider attitude change interventions that focus on both implicit and explicit attitudes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit and explicit alcohol-related cognitions in heavy and light drinkers.

Implicit and explicit alcohol-related cognitions were measured in 2 dimensions: positive-negative (valence) and arousal-sedation, with 2 versions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & J. L. Schwartz) and related explicit measures. Heavy drinkers (n = 24) strongly associated alcohol with arousal on the arousal IAT (especially men) and scored higher on explicit arousal expectancies than light drinkers (n = 24). On the valence IAT, both light and heavy drinkers showed strong negative implicit associations with alcohol that contrasted with their positive explicit judgments (heavy drinkers were more positive). Implicit and explicit cognitions uniquely contributed to the prediction of 1-month prospective drinking. Heavy drinkers' implicit arousal associations could reflect the sensitized psychomotor-activating response to drug cues, a motivational mechanism hypothesized to underlie the etiology of addictive behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit and explicit prejudice and interracial interaction.

The present research examined how implicit racial associations and explicit racial attitudes of Whites relate to behaviors and impressions in interracial interactions. Specifically, the authors examined how response latency and self-report measures predicted bias and perceptions of bias in verbal and nonverbal behavior exhibited by Whites while they interacted with a Black partner. As predicted, Whites' self-reported racial attitudes significantly predicted bias in their verbal behavior to Black relative to White confederates. Furthermore, these explicit attitudes predicted how much friendlier Whites felt that they behaved toward White than Black partners. In contrast, the response latency measure significantly predicted Whites' nonverbal friendliness and the extent to which the confederates and observers perceived bias in the participants' friendliness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Forming implicit and explicit attitudes toward individuals: Social group association cues.

The authors explored how social group cues (e.g., obesity, physical attractiveness) strongly associated with valence affect the formation of attitudes toward individuals. Although explicit attitude formation has been examined in much past research (e.g., S. T. Fiske & S. L. Neuberg, 1990), in the current work, the authors considered how implicit as well as explicit attitudes toward individuals are influenced by these cues. On the basis of a systems of evaluation perspective (e.g., R. J. Rydell & A. R. McConnell, 2006; R. J. Rydell, A. R. McConnell, D. M. Mackie, & L. M. Strain, 2006), the authors anticipated and found that social group cues had a strong impact on implicit attitude formation in all cases and on explicit attitude formation when behavioral information about the target was ambiguous. These findings obtained for cues related to obesity (Experiments 1 and 4) and physical attractiveness (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, parallel findings were observed for race, and participants holding greater implicit racial prejudice against African Americans formed more negative implicit attitudes toward a novel African American target person than did participants with less implicit racial prejudice. Implications for research on attitudes, impression formation, and stigma are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The regulation of explicit and implicit race bias: The role of motivations to respond without prejudice.

Three studies examined the moderating role of motivations to respond without prejudice (e.g., internal and external) in expressions of explicit and implicit race bias. In all studies, participants reported their explicit attitudes toward Blacks. Implicit measures consisted of a sequential priming task (Study 1) and the Implicit Association Test (Studies 2 and 3). Study 3 used a cognitive busyness manipulation to preclude effects of controlled processing on implicit responses. In each study, explicit race bias was moderated by internal motivation to respond without prejudice, whereas implicit race bias was moderated by the interaction of internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice. Specifically, high internal, low external participants exhibited lower levels of implicit race bias than did all other participants. Implications for the development of effective self-regulation of race bias are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit and explicit self-esteem: What are we measuring?

For nearly 60 years, researchers and practitioners have struggled toward agreement on the definition and measurement of self-esteem. Both consensus and precision have proven elusive, and debate about what we are or should be measuring with our instruments continues today. In this article, we offer a clarifying account of the nature of self-esteem as a key aspect of personal identity and examine its legitimacy as a hypothetical construct. The distinction between implicit and explicit self-esteem is discussed in this context, raising critical questions about the theoretical status of the former. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attitudes and the Implicit Association Test.

Three studies examined the relationship between the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & J. L. K. Schwartz, 1998) and explicit attitudes. In the 1st and all subsequent studies, the lack of any correlation between the IAT and explicitly measured attitudes supports the view that the IAT is independent from explicit attitudes. Study 2 examined the relationships among the IAT, explicit attitudes, and behavior and found that the explicit attitudes predicted behavior but the IAT did not. Finally, in Study 3 it was found that the IAT was affected by exposing participants to new associations between attitude objects, whereas the explicit attitudes remained unchanged. Taken together, these results support an environmental association interpretation of the IAT in which IAT scores reflect the associations a person has been exposed to in his or her environment rather than the extent to which the person endorses those evaluative associations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intuition and the correspondence between implicit and explicit self-esteem.

Four studies tested whether the perceived validity of intuition increases the correspondence between implicit and explicit self-esteem. Studies 1 and 2 found, with 2 different measures of implicit self-esteem, that people who chronically view their intuition as valid have more consistent implicit and explicit self-esteem. In contrast, people with relatively low faith in their intuition had a negative relation between implicit and explicit self-esteem, suggesting that they may overcorrect their explicit self-views for the potential bias posed by implicit self-esteem. In Studies 3 and 4, participants who were induced to view their intuition as valid reported explicit self-views (self-evaluations made under time pressure, or state self-esteem) that were more consistent with their implicit self-esteem. These results suggest that people experience implicit self-esteem as intuitive evaluations. The correspondence between implicit and explicit self-esteem among individuals who view their intuition as valid may suggest that these individuals incorporate implicit self-esteem into their explicit self-views. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Religious beliefs of Catholic college students and their attitudes toward minorities.

"There was a very significant tendency… for those scoring high on the religion scale to be less favorable toward Jews and Negroes and to favor segregation of Negroes in their own parishes, while those who scored low on the religion scale were significantly less prejudiced and were opposed to segregation." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A scale measuring attitudes toward working for the government.

To develop a measure of attitudes toward government employment, a preliminary scale administered to 173 college students was item analyzed and then tried out on 493 government employees and 299 private industry employees. A final scale was selected that includes 70 items that discriminate between satisfied government and private industry employees in professional and managerial positions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relative versus absolute measures of explicit attitudes: Implications for predicting diverse attitude-relevant criteria.

The authors report 4 studies exploring a self-report strategy for measuring explicit attitudes that uses "relative" ratings, in which respondents indicate how favorable or unfavorable they are compared with other people. Results consistently showed that attitudes measured with relative scales predicted relevant criterion variables (self-report of behavior, measures of knowledge, peer ratings of attitudes, peer ratings of behavior) better than did attitudes measured with more traditional "absolute" scales. The obtained pattern of differences in prediction by relative versus absolute measures of attitudes did not appear to be attributable to differential variability, social desirability effects, the clarity of scale-point meanings, the number of scale points, or overlap with subjective norms. The final study indicated that relative measures induce respondents to consider social comparison information and behavioral information when making their responses more than do absolute measures, which may explain the higher correlations between relative measures of attitudes and relevant criteria. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using aversive images to enhance healthy food choices and implicit attitudes: An experimental test of evaluative conditioning.

Objective: To examine the effect of communicating images of energy-dense snack foods paired with aversive images of the potential health consequences of unhealthy eating, on implicit and explicit attitudes and food choice behavior. Design: Participants were randomly allocated to either an evaluative conditioning (EC) procedure that paired images of snack foods with images of potential adverse health consequences or a control condition that featured images of snack foods alone. Main Outcome Measures: Implicit attitudes were assessed pre- and post-intervention. Explicit attitudes and food choice behavior were assessed post-intervention. Results: The conditioning intervention made implicit attitudes toward energy-dense snacks more negative, with this effect greatest in those with relatively more favorable implicit attitudes toward these snacks at baseline. Participants in the conditioning intervention were more likely to choose fruit rather than snacks in a behavioral choice task, a relationship mediated by changes in implicit attitudes. Conclusion: Presenting aversive images of potential health consequences with those of specific foodstuffs can change implicit attitudes, which impacts on subsequent food choice behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Smoking as subculture? Influence on Hispanic and non-Hispanic White women's attitudes toward smoking and obesity.

Cultural stereotypes might help explain why smoking is less prevalent among Hispanic than non-Hispanic White women, whereas obesity is more prevalent. Hispanic (n=130) and non-Hispanic White (n=114) women rated their thoughts and feelings regarding a female smoker and an overweight woman. Ethnicity did not influence evaluations, but attitudes toward smokers were more positive among more acculturated Hispanic women, F(l, 66)=9.9, pF(l, 28)=5.65, pF(1, 36)=5.92, pF(l, 86)=40.8, pF(l, 138)=7.7, p     

Implicit versus explicit frequency comparisons: Two mechanisms of auditory change detection.

Listeners had to compare, with respect to pitch (frequency), a pure tone (T) to a combination of pure tones presented subsequently (C). The elements of C were either synchronous, and therefore difficult to hear out individually, or asynchronous and therefore easier to hear out individually. In the “present/absent” condition, listeners had to judge if T reappeared in C or not. In the “up/down” condition, the task was to judge if the element of C most similar to T was higher or lower than T. When the elements of C were synchronous, the up/down task was found to be easier than the present/absent task; the converse result was obtained when the elements of C were asynchronous. This provides evidence for a duality of auditory comparisons between tone frequencies: (1) implicit comparisons made by automatic and direction-sensitive “frequency-shift detectors”; (2) explicit comparisons more sensitive to the magnitude of a frequency change than to its direction. Another experiment suggests that although the frequency-shift detectors cannot compare effectively two tones separated by an interfering tone, they are largely insensitive to interfering noise bursts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding implicit and explicit attitude change: A systems of reasoning analysis.

There is considerable controversy about how to conceptualize implicit and explicit attitudes, reflecting substantial speculation about the mechanisms involved in implicit and explicit attitude formation and change. To investigate this issue, the current work examines the processes by which new attitudes are formed and changed and how these attitudes predict behavior. Five experiments support a systems of reasoning approach to implicit and explicit attitude change. Specifically, explicit attitudes were shaped in a manner consistent with fast-changing processes, were affected by explicit processing goals, and uniquely predicted more deliberate behavioral intentions. Conversely, implicit attitudes reflected an associative system characterized by a slower process of repeated pairings between an attitude object and related evaluations, were unaffected by explicit processing goals, uniquely predicted spontaneous behaviors, and were exclusively affected by associative information about the attitude object that was not available for higher order cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Smearing the opposition: Implicit and explicit stigmatization of the 2008 U.S. Presidential candidates and the current U.S. President.

Four studies investigated whether political allegiance and salience of outgroup membership contribute to the phenomenon of acceptance of false, stigmatizing information (smears) about political candidates. Studies 1–3 were conducted in the month prior to the 2008 U.S. Presidential election and together demonstrated that pre-standing opposition to John McCain or Barack Obama, as well as the situational salience of differentiating social categories (i.e., for Obama, race; for McCain, age), contributed to the implicit activation and explicit endorsement of smearing labels (i.e., Obama is Muslim; McCain is senile). The influence of salient differentiating categories on smear acceptance was particularly pronounced among politically undecided individuals. Study 4 clarified that social category differences heighten smear acceptance, even if the salient category is semantically unrelated to the smearing label, showing that, approximately 1 year after the election, the salience of race amplified belief that Obama is a socialist among undecided people and McCain supporters. Taken together, these findings suggest that, at both implicit and explicit cognitive levels, social category differences and political allegiance contribute to acceptance of smears against political candidates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The thin ideal and body image: An experimental study of implicit attitudes.

Thin-ideal internalization is a core construct in body dissatisfaction, central to eating disorders and generally assessed with explicit measures. To compare implicit and explicit measures of thin-ideal internalization and their relationship to body image, the authors developed a thin-ideal implicit association test (IAT). Although the IAT revealed a strong cognitive bias toward fat as negative (differences in response latencies: t[85]=9.829, p     

Roger, me, and my attitude: Film propaganda and cynicism toward corporate leadership.

Two studies of US and Japanese respondents assessed attitudes resulting from viewing the film Roger & Me (M. Moore, 1989). In Exp 1, the responses of 162 adults who had seen the film in the US were contrasted with 106 people about to view the film. Those who saw the film exhibited more cynical (negative) attitudes toward General Motors in particular and toward US business in general. Exp 2 employed a Solomon 4-group design in Tokyo, Japan, to assess the generalizability of the US results and also to assess attitude change from pretest to posttest. Consistent with the US results, viewing the film had negative effects on Japanese attitudes toward General Motors and toward US business in general. Furthermore, attitudes toward Japanese business became slightly more positive as a function of viewing the film. Implications and future research needs are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impulses got the better of me: Alcohol moderates the influence of implicit attitudes toward food cues on eating behavior.

This study shows that alcohol consumption enhances the prediction of candy consumption by implicit attitudes and at the same time decreases the predictive validity of cognitive restraint standards. Female participants were assigned to either an alcohol or a control condition and were then given an opportunity to taste candies. For participants in the alcohol condition, candy consumption was uniquely predicted by previously assessed implicit attitudes toward the candy. In contrast, candy consumption was primarily predicted by cognitive restraint (Three Factor Eating Questionnaire) in the control condition. Moreover, participants who consumed alcohol ate significantly more candy at the group level. These results indicate that alcohol increases the behavioral impact of impulsive determinants on eating behavior while disrupting the behavioral impact of reflective determinants. They further demonstrate that measures of implicit attitudes toward tempting stimuli add incremental validity for the prediction of self-control outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)