Propositional accounts of implicit evaluation: Taking stock and looking ahead

Abstract

Associative accounts suggest that implicit (indirectly measured) evaluations are sensitive primarily to co-occurrence information (e.g., pairings of gorges with positive experiences) and are represented associatively (e.g., GORGE–NICE). By contrast, recent propositional accounts have argued that implicit evaluations are also responsive to relational information (e.g., gorges causing vs. preventing ennui) and are represented propositionally (e.g., “I find gorges fascinating”). In a review of 30 empirical papers involving exposure to contradictory co-occurrence information and relational information, we found overwhelming evidence for the latter dominating the updating of implicit evaluations, supporting the propositional perspective. However, unlike explicit evaluations, implicit evaluations seem recalcitrant in the face of relational information that requires retrospective revaluation of already encoded co-occurrence information. These findings may be jointly explained by a “common currency” hypothesis under which implicit evaluations emerge from compressed summary representations, which are sensitive to relational information but are not fully propositional.

Persuading the Implicit Mind: Changing Negative Implicit Evaluations With an 8-Minute Podcast

“…In addition, across all three studies, the revision of implicit evaluations was predicted by participants’ self-reported willingness to revise their views on trophy hunting, thus providing evidence for the importance of propositional processes in implicit evaluation (Cone et al, 2017; De Houwer et al, 2020; Kurdi & Dunham, 2020). Moreover, in Study 2, a manipulation that prompted participants to retrieve and reflect on their preexisting attitudes had no impact on the revision of implicit evaluations.…”

“…As such, the same theoretical accounts would also likely predict that implicit evaluations should not be strongly moved given this evaluative complexity: After all, under these accounts, implicit evaluations are thought to reflect the sum total of positive and negative information encountered about an attitude object. By contrast, more recent theoretical perspectives have suggested that implicit evaluations can be sensitive to propositional reasoning emerging from persuasive messages and need not reflect the sum total of evaluative associations (e.g., Cone et al, 2017; De Houwer, 2014; Kurdi & Dunham, 2020). The studies reported below give us the opportunity to test these competing predictions.…”

“…In this project, we use Knowlton’s highly publicized story as a case study to test whether even highly negative implicit evaluations, such as the ones created via the short vignette above, are amenable to updating using strong counterattitudinal arguments. In doing so, we build and expand upon previous work on implicit attitude change in general (Cone et al, 2017; De Houwer et al, 2020; Kurdi & Dunham, 2020) and implicit attitude change via reinterpretation in particular (Mann & Ferguson, 2015, 2017; Wyer, 2010, 2016).…”

How should we think about implicit measures and their empirical “anomalies”?

“…These theories assume that the same associative representations underlie responses on both implicit and explicit measures and that these representations are consciously accessible. Whether the assumption of associative representation is defensible in light of recent evidence is a different question, because a growing body of evidence suggests that the representations underlying responses on implicit and explicit measures have propositional structure (for reviews, see Corneille & Stahl, 2019;De Houwer, Van Dessel, & Moran, 2020;Kurdi & Dunham, 2020). Although research on this question is ongoing, the critical point is that evidence against unconsciousness and dual representations are anomalies only for frameworks that postulate two distinct underlying representations, one being conscious and one being unconscious.…”

What can the implicit social cognition literature teach us about implicit social cognition?

“…Not all memory research seeks to cure dementia; not all phonological awareness research tries to eradicate dyslexia; and not all auditory perception research contributes to the development of hearing aids. Similarly, much implicit social cognition research explores basic aspects of thought and behavior, including learning and representation (Kurdi & Dunham, 2020), social cognitive development (Dunham, Baron, & Banaji, 2008), and cultural change (Charlesworth & Banaji, 2019), without making any claim of immediate applicability to real-world problems. Thus, whether implicit social cognition research can explain real-world inequality should not be treated as its sole measure of success.…”