Title: The associations in our heads belong to us: Searching for attitudes and knowledge in implicit evaluation
Abstract: Abstract Explicitly, humans can distinguish their own attitudes from evaluations possessed by others. Implicitly, the viability of a distinction between attitudes and evaluative knowledge is less clear. We investigated relations between explicit attitudes, cultural knowledge and the Implicit Association Test (IAT). In seven studies (158 samples, N=107,709), the IAT was reliably and variably related to explicit attitudes, and explicit attitudes accounted for the relationship between the IAT and cultural knowledge. We suggest that people do not have introspective access to the associations formed via experience in a culture. Ownership of mental associations is established by presence in mind and influence on thinking, feeling and doing. Regardless of origin, associations are influential depending on their availability, accessibility, salience, and applicability. Distinguishing associations as "not mine" is a self-regulatory act and contributes to the distinction between explicit evaluation, where such acts are routine, and implicit evaluation, where they are not. Acknowledgements This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (R01 MH68447). Thanks to Mahzarin Banaji, Jerry Clore, Tony Greenwald, Fred Smyth, Bethany Teachman, Tim Wilson and Mark Zanna for helpful comments. Supplementary materials can be found at http://briannosek.com/.
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 158
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