Repeated evaluative pairings and evaluative statements: How effectively do they shift implicit attitudes?

Abstract

Six experiments, involving a total of 6,492 participants, were conducted to investigate the relative effectiveness of repeated evaluative pairings (REP; exposure to category members paired with pleasant or unpleasant images), evaluative statements (ES; verbally signaling upcoming pairings without actual exposure), and their combination (ES + REP) in shifting implicit social and nonsocial attitudes. Learning modality (REP, ES, and ES + REP) was varied between participants and implicit attitudes were assessed using an Implicit Association Test (IAT). Study 1 (N = 675) used fictitious social groups (NIFFs and LAAPs), Study 2 (N = 1,034) used novel social groups (humans with long vs. square faces), Study 3 (N = 1,072) used nonsocial stimuli (squares vs. rectangles), and Study 4 (N = 848) and Study 5 (N = 958) used known social groups (young vs. elderly; American vs. foreign). ES were more effective than REP and no less superior than ES + REP in producing implicit attitude change. Results were robust across social and nonsocial domains and for known and novel groups. Study 6 (N = 1,905) eliminated time on intervention, levels of construal, and expectancy effects as possible explanations for these findings. Associative theories of implicit evaluation posit that implicit attitudes should shift piecemeal over time; yet, in these experiments, one-shot language-based learning led to larger shifts in implicit attitude than exposure to stimulus pairings. Moreover, the redundancy observed in REP + ES suggests that attitude acquisition from repeated pairings and evaluative instructions may rely on shared mental representations. (PsycINFO Database Record

The relationship between implicit intergroup attitudes and beliefs

“…Results. Attitude IAT scores significantly differed from each other across the control and experimental conditions [t(156.01) = 5.70, P < 0.0001, BF 10 = 1.09 × 10 6 , Cohen's d = 0.78 (study 2A) and t(117.46) = 4.47, P < 0.0001, BF 10 = 1.59 × 10 3 , Cohen's d = 0.73 (study 2B)], replicating well-established evaluative conditioning effects involving the same stimulus materials(57). Crucially, parallel changes in belief IAT scores were also observed.…”

“…In fact, we believe that the relationship between implicit social cognition and language is bidirectional. However, we highlight this particular direction here because, unlike the opposite direction, it (i) offers a clear point of causal intervention in the system and (ii) has been demonstrated empirically (57). ]…”

Model-free and model-based learning processes in the updating of explicit and implicit evaluations

“…As such, if the present revaluation paradigm successfully shifts explicit evaluations of a stimulus, such learning should also be reflected by implicit measures of evaluation. Second, in studies involving novel targets, such as the present one, patterns of convergence between explicit and implicit evaluations are common because participants do not have access to any information about the targets other than the information provided by the experimenter (12). Moreover, in this setting, pressures to act in a socially desirable manner, known to result in dissociations between explicit and implicit evaluations (20), are unlikely to operate.…”

“…repeatedly demonstrated that implicit evaluations can be flexibly updated via purely verbal instructions and that such updating need not involve direct experience with any stimulus (12). The preponderance of such findings has prompted some to abandon a dual-process perspective on evaluative learning altogether and to replace it with a model of evaluative learning that relies on a single propositional process (13)(14)(15).…”

Field-Identification IAT predicts students’ academic persistence over and above Theory of Planned Behavior constructs

“…As a matter of fact, recent research shows that constructs measured by the IAT can be formed through fully deliberate learning processes (e.g. Gast & De Houwer, 2012;Kurdi & Banaji, 2017;Van Dessel, De Houwer, Gast, & Smith, 2015) and that people are able to consciously introspect their IAT score (Hahn, Judd, Hirsch, & Blair, 2014). More generally, that indirect measures reflect the operation of either independent learning pathways or behavioral expression pathways has been questioned lately (for a recent discussion, see Corneille & Stahl, 2018) Instead, the current findings may suggest that students' intentions are less stable than their identification to the field.…”