Implicit attitude - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Implicit attitudes are the positive or negative thoughts, feelings, or actions towards objects which arise due to past experiences which one is either unaware of or which one cannot attribute to an identified previous experience. The commonly used definition of implicit attitude within cognitive and social psychology comes from Greenwald

Anthony Greenwald

Anthony Greenwald is a Social Psychologist and, since 1986, Professor of Psychology at University of Washington.According to Greenwald’s biographical page from the University of Washington, in 1959 he received a B.A. from Yale University. In 1961, he received a M.A. from Harvard University, and in...

& Banaji

Mahzarin Banaji

Mahzarin Rustum Banaji was born and raised in India, in the town of Secunderabad, where she attended St. Ann's High School. Her B.A. is from and her M.A. in Psychology from Osmania University in Hyderabad. In 1986, Banaji received a Ph.D. from Ohio State University, and was an NIH postdoctoral...

’s template for definitions of terms related to implicit cognition

Implicit cognition

Implicit cognition refers to unconscious influences such as knowledge, perception, or memory, that influence a person's behavior, even though they themselves have no conscious awareness whatsoever of those influences.-See also:*Consciousness...

(see also implicit cognition

Implicit cognition

, implicit stereotype, and implicit self-esteem

Implicit self-esteem

Implicit self-esteem refers to a person's disposition to evaluate themselves in a spontaneous, automatic, or unconscious manner. It contrasts with explicit self-esteem, which entails more conscious and reflective self-evaluation...

for usage of this template):

"Implicit attitudes are introspectively unidentified (or inaccurately identified) traces of past experience that mediate favorable or unfavorable feeling, thought, or action toward social objects".

Note that an attitude

Attitude

-Science and engineering:* Attitude as orientation of a geometric figure, such as a line, plane or rigid body* Attitude as strike or dip of a layer of rock in geology* Attitude of a wing or aircraft relative to airflow...

is differentiated from the concept of a stereotype in that it functions as a broad favorable or unfavorable characteristic towards a social object whereas a stereotype

Stereotype

A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...

is a set of favorable and/or unfavorable characteristics which is applied to an individual based on social group membership.

Categorization of implicit attitudes

A review of research findings by Gawronski et al. (2006) proposed three classes of implicit attitudes which are measured through current indirect measures and defined by the way in which they obscure awareness of the attitude; these are source awareness, content awareness, and impact awareness. Source awareness is roughly described as the “awareness of the origin of a particular attitude” (emphasis added). Content awareness is differentiated from source awareness by the lack of awareness about the attitude, rather than simply its origin. Finally, one may have awareness of both the attitude and its source but the attitude may still have influences on thought or behavior beyond ones awareness; this can be thought of as impact awareness.

Early focus on explicit attitudes

Much of the literature within the field of social psychology has focused on explicit constructions of the attitude construct. Until more recently, examination of attitudes beyond reported awareness has lagged far behind that of explicit attitudes. This point is driven home in a review of research in the mid 1990s which found that among attitudinal research published in 1989, approximately only 1 in 9 experimental paradigms utilized an indirect measure

Indirect tests of memory

Indirect memory tests assess the retention of information without direct reference to the source of information. Participants are given tasks designed to elicit knowledge that was acquired incidentally or unconsciously and is evident when performance shows greater inclination towards items...

of attitude (necessary for determining contributions of implicit attitudes) while all of the reviewed studies employed direct measures such as self report

Self-report inventory

A self-report inventory is a type of psychological test in which a person fills out a survey or questionnaire with or without the help of an investigator...

of attitudes which were explicitly aware to participants.

Methods for investigation

There are wide ranging experimental methods in the literature which provide evidence for the presence and effects of implicit attitudes on cognition and behavior. Following are links or brief descriptions where appropriate and findings from several of these methods.

Implicit Association Test

The Implicit Association Test is a latency

Latency

Latency or latent may refer to:*Latency period , the time between exposure to a pathogen, chemical or radiation, and when symptoms first become apparent...

-based measure of the relative associations between two concepts. In a series of tasks, participants sort words or images representing a target concept such as race (white/black) and stimuli with known positive/negative valence

Valence (psychology)

Valence, as used in psychology, especially in discussing emotions, means the intrinsic attractiveness or aversiveness of an event, object, or situation. However, the term is also used to characterize and categorize specific emotions. For example, the emotions popularly referred to as "negative",...

into two categories (usually indicated by right or left location on a computer screen). Each category of concept words or images is paired with both positive and negative stimuli. Faster categorization indicates greater association between words and/or which are grouped together (ex. faster categorization of dogs when paired with positive rather than negative words) and therefore similar positive or negative attitude towards the concept in question. A full demonstration of the IAT procedure can be found at the Project Implicit link and the IAT Inquisit link below.

Research using the IAT measure of implicit attitudes has demonstrated consistent experimental and population-based attitudes with respect to concepts such as gender, race, and age. A recent analysis from the Project Implicit database found that science-gender stereotypes are predictive of differences in gender related math and science performance across countries in an international sample.

Sequential priming task

The sequential priming task (sometimes also called an ‘affective priming task’) described by Fazio et al. (1986) is another latency-based measure which measures how quickly participants recognize positive or negative connotation of a stimulus adjective. Adjectives categorized by participants as most strongly positive or negative in connotation were used as attitudinal primes. These prime words were followed by target words which participants were asked to categorize based on a simple judgment such as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Primes facilitate categorization (speed of response) of target words when they possess the same valence characteristics as the target words. It follows that quicker responding to target words in the presence of primes with positive valence indicates a more positive implicit attitude towards the target.

Research using the sequential priming procedure has been frequently used in research on eating and attitudes towards food. In clinical studies, the procedure was used to study attitudes of those diagnosed with eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa. Along with many of the other methods presented here, researchers have used the procedure to measure the effects of stereotypes, including measurement of the effectiveness of stereotype reduction treatments.

Semantic priming task

In the semantic priming task paradigm described by Wittenbrink et al. (1997), participants are shown a word prime at intervals which are too brief for reported awareness (see subliminal stimuli

Subliminal stimuli

Subliminal stimuli , contrary to supraliminal stimuli or "above threshold", are any sensory stimuli below an individual's threshold for conscious perception. The large majority of research has found that subliminal messages do not produce strong or lasting changes in behavior...

). The word prime consists of two groups of words representing the concept in question (such as black sounding names or white sounding names). Participants were then asked to complete a lexical decision task (LDT)

Lexical decision task

The lexical decision task is a procedure used in many psychology and psycholinguistics experiments. The basic procedure involves measuring how quickly people classify stimuli as words or nonwords....

to identify if target stimuli are words or a non-words. The target stimuli consist of words with known positive or negative valence. When words with positive valence are categorized more quickly in the presence of one group of word primes (such as black sounding names), this indicates positive attitudes towards the group.

Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST)

In the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST) as described by De Houwer (2003), participants categorized stimuli which consisted of words that either had positive or negative valence that were presented in either the color white or two different colors. When the words are presented in white, participants categorize based words on their perceived positive or negative valence. When the words are presented in color, participants are asked to categorize based on color alone and ignore word meaning. When colored words are presented, categorization accuracy and speed are facilitated when, for words which the respondent has a positive implicit attitude, the response was the same as was expected for white words with obvious positive valence. A full demonstration of the EAST procedure can be found in the external links below.

The EAST has been used in research of attitudes of those who have specific phobias and/or anxiety. Additionally, the test has been recently used to measure implicit attitudes towards alcohol in populations who have substance abuse problems; and the test has been cited as having relatively high predictive value for problem substance use.

Go/No-go Association Task (GNAT)

In practice, the GNAT appears similar to the Implicit Association Test in that participants are asked to categorize targets representing either a concept (such as race; ex. white or black names) or words which have obvious positive or negative valence. Participants are asked to respond (‘go’) or decline to respond (‘no-go’) during a short interval after each of the stimuli are presented. In test trials, participants are asked to respond to one of the concepts (white or black) and words with either positive or negative valence; these are then switched so that the concept is then paired with the opposite valence category. When paired with words with positive valence, faster and more accurate responding indicates greater association, and therefore positive attitude towards the target concept (either white or black race). A full demonstration of the GNAT procedure can be found in the external links below.

Like the EAST, the GNAT has been used in populations who have been diagnosed with acute phobias to measure fear associations in addition to research on stereotypes and discrimination.

Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP)

The Affect Misattribution Procedure relies on participant ratings of neutral stimuli as an indirect measure of implicit attitudes rather than latency or accuracy measures. In the procedure, participants are first presented with a stimulus (usually an image or word), for either a brief visible period or subliminally, which is suspected to elicit a positive or negative attitude. Directly afterwards, participants are presented with a neutral stimulus (most often a Chinese pictograph

Chinese character

Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...

) which they are asked to rate as either more or less, in this case visually, pleasing than an average stimulus. During these trials, the positive or negative affect in response to the priming image is misattributed or ‘projected

Psychological projection

Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people...

’ onto the neutral stimulus such that it is rated as more or less pleasing than would be expected from solitary presentation. Neutral stimuli which are rated as more visually pleasing indicate that the preceding concept presented in the prime stimuli are associated with positive valence. A full demonstration of the AMP procedure can be found in the external links below.

The AMP has been used to study attitudes towards political candidates and has proven useful in predicting voting behavior. Also, the procedure is frequently used in the study of substance use; for example, attitudes towards cigarettes among smokers and non-smokers and attitudes towards alcohol among heavy drinkers.