Three experiments investigated predictions concerning asymmetrical patterns of implicit and explicit self-esteem change. Specifically, we investigated the influence of knowledge about the own self that is momentarily salient as well as the influence of affective valence associated with the self in memory on implicit and explicit self-esteem. The latter was induced by evaluative conditioning, the former by directed thinking about oneself. We found that while evaluative conditioning changed implicit but not explicit self-esteem (Experiment 1), thinking about the own self altered explicit but not implicit self-esteem (Experiment 2).Moreover, in a third experiment, it could be shown that the effect of evaluative conditioning can spill over to the explicit level when participants are asked to focus on their feelings prior to making their self-report judgements (Experiment 3). Implications of our results are discussed in terms of recent controversies regarding dual process models of attitudes and associative versus propositional modes of information processing.Keywords: self-esteem, implicit measures, explicit measures, directed thinking, evaluative conditioning, dual process models ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTChanging Explicit and Implicit Attitudes 3Changing Explicit and Implicit Attitudes:The Case of Self-EsteemThe understanding of the self is probably one of the oldest and most doggedly investigated problems in psychology. Based on the analysis of William James (1890) social psychologists have accumulated a number of empirical findings which added to our fundamental understanding of its structure and functioning (for an overview see Baumeister, 1998). A broad strand of research investigated the effects and benefits of self-esteem, that is, the global evaluation of the own self and the association of the own person with positive or negative attributes (Baumeister, 1998;von Collani & Herzberg, 2003) and the consequences it might have for a multitude of behavioural domains in life. High self-esteem is typically viewed as an indicator of psychological health and the popular media bombard people with the message that high self-esteem reflects optimal functioning and that it is a necessary precursor to productivity and happiness (Baumeister, 1998), but on the other hand it still remains unclear whether there are any causal relationships between self-esteem and psychological well-being (Baumeister, Campbell, Krüger, & Vohs, 2003). Nonetheless, many studies focused on possibilities to enhance the self-esteem level of individuals via different methods (success/failure feedback: Ybarra, 1999; mood induction: Brown & Mankowski, 1993; directed thinking tasks: McGuire & McGuire, 1996; social comparisons: Stapel & Blanton, 2004, etc.).Although the understanding of the self and self-esteem in particular has witnessed important progress in the last decades (Baumeister, 1998), social psychology theorizing about the self experienced a shift in recent years. Drawing on the distinction between explicit and implicit attitudes (Wils...

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Aggressive behavior between children in schools is a topic that receives much interest as violence and aggressive behavior cause many maladaptive social outcomes in the school setting. In the current study the Implicit Association Test (IAT) was adapted as a measure of children’s implicit aggression, by assessing the association of the self category (vs. other) with the attribute concept of aggressive (vs. peaceful). In addition to the IAT, a questionnaire measure to assess explicit aggression was utilized. The main goal of the present contribution was to examine the predictive validity of measures of implicit as well as explicit aggression in predicting the scores in a competitive computer game as an indicator of children’s aggressive behavior. Taken together, the results indicated that measures of implicit and explicit aggression could serve as reliable predictors of children’s aggressive behavior and that the IAT possesses incremental validity in addition to the self-report measure.

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