Many methods for reducing implicit prejudice have been identified, but little is known about their relative effectiveness. We held a research contest to experimentally compare interventions for reducing the expression of implicit racial prejudice. Teams submitted seventeen interventions that were tested an average of 3.70 times each in four studies (total N = 17,021), with rules for revising interventions between studies. Eight of seventeen interventions were effective at reducing implicit preferences for Whites compared to Blacks, particularly ones that provided experience with counterstereotypical exemplars, used evaluative conditioning methods, and provided strategies to override biases. The other nine interventions were ineffective, particularly ones that engaged participants with others' perspectives, asked participants to consider egalitarian values, or induced a positive emotion. The most potent interventions were ones that invoked high self-involvement or linked Black people with positivity and White people with negativity. No intervention consistently reduced explicit racial preferences. Furthermore, intervention effectiveness only weakly extended to implicit preferences for Asians and Hispanics. Abstract = 160 words Keywords = attitudes, racial prejudice, implicit social cognition, malleability, Implicit Association Test September 9, 2016 update: We updated this manuscript to fix several minor reporting errors that we have learned about since the publication of the manuscript in August 2014. For a summary of these updates, please see pages 67 and 68. Authors' note:This project was supported by a gift from Project Implicit. Lai and Hawkins are consultants and Nosek is an officer of Project Implicit, Inc., a non-profit organization that includes in its mission "To develop and deliver methods for investigating and applying phenomena of implicit social cognition, including especially phenomena of implicit bias based on age, race, gender or other factors. Thoughts and feelings outside of conscious awareness shape social perception, judgment and action (Bargh, 1999;Devine, 1989;Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Nowhere has this idea been more explored than in studies of racial prejudice in which people report egalitarian racial attitudes, but also implicitly prefer Whites compared to Blacks (Devine, 1989;Dovidio, Kawakami, Johnson, Johnson, & Howard, 1997;Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995;. These studies have been influential because implicit racial preferences predict behaviors such as negative interracial contact (McConnell & Leibold, 2001), biases in medical decision-making (Green et al., 2007), and hiring discrimination (Rooth, 2010).From the hundreds of studies conducted, we can conclude that implicit preferences (1) are related to, but distinct from, explicit preferences (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995;, (2) are constructed through different mechanisms than explicit preferences (De Houwer, Teige-Mocigemba, Spruyt, & Moors, 2009;Ranganath & Nosek, 2008;Ratliff & Nosek, 2011;Rydell & McConnell, 2006), ...

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether negative implicit attitudes and beliefs toward overweight persons exist among health professionals who specialize in obesity treatment, and to compare these findings to the implicit anti-fat bias evident in the general population. DESIGN: Health care professionals completed a series of implicit and explicit attitude and belief measures. Results were compared to measures obtained from a general population sample. SUBJECTS: A total of 84 health professionals who treat obesity (71% male, mean age 48 y, mean body mass index (BMI) 25.39). MEASUREMENTS: Participants completed an attitude-and a belief-based lmplicit Association Test. This reaction time measure of automatic memory-based associations asked participants to classify words into the following target category pair. 'fat people' vs 'thin people'. Simultaneously, the tasks required categorization of words into one of the following descriptor category pairs: good vs bad (attitude measure) or motivated vs lazy (stereotype measure). Participants also reported explicit attitudes and beliefs about fat and thin persons. RESULTS: Clear evidence for implicit anti-fat bias was found for both the attitude and stereotype measures. As expected, this bias was strong but was lower than bias in the general population. Also as predicted, only minimal evidence for an explicit antifat bias was found. Implicit and explicit measures of the lazy stereotype were positively related although the attitude measures were not. CONCLUSION: Even health care specialists have strong negative associations toward obese persons, indicating the pervasiveness of the stigma toward obesity. Notwithstanding, there appears to be a buffering factor, perhaps related to their experience in caring for obese patients, which reduces the bias.

Three studies investigated implicit biases, and their modifiability, against overweight persons. In Study 1 (N = 144), the authors demonstrated strong implicit anti-fat attitudes and stereotypes using the Implicit Association Test, despite no explicit anti-fat bias. When participants were informed that obesity is caused predominantly by overeating and lack of exercise, higher implicit bias relative to controls was produced; informing participants that obesity is mainly due to genetic factors did not result in lower bias. In Studies 2A (N = 90) and 2B (N = 63), participants read stories of discrimination against obese persons to evoke empathy. This did not lead to lower bias compared with controls but did produce diminished implicit bias among overweight participants, suggesting an in-group bias.

COVID-19 presents significant social, economic, and medical challenges. Because COVID-19 has already begun to precipitate huge increases in mental health problems, clinical psychological science must assert a leadership role in guiding a national response to this secondary crisis. In this paper, COVID-19 is conceptualized as a unique, compounding, multidimensional stressor that will create a vast need for intervention and necessitate new paradigms for mental health service delivery and training. Urgent challenge areas across developmental periods are discussed, followed by a review of psychological symptoms that likely will increase in prevalence and require innovative solutions in both science and practice. Implications for new research directions, clinical approaches, and policy issues are discussed to highlight the opportunities for clinical psychological science to emerge as an updated, contemporary field capable of addressing the burden of mental illness and distress in the wake of COVID-19 and beyond.

There is an imperative to predict hazardous drinking among college students. Implicit measures have been useful in predicting unique variance in drinking and alcohol-related problems. However, they have been developed to test different theories of drinking and have rarely been directly compared to one another. Thus, their comparative utility is unclear. The current study examined five alcohol-related variants of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) in a sample of 300 undergraduates and sought to establish their predictive validity. Results indicated that the Drinking Identity IAT, which measured associations of “drinker” with “me,” was the most consistent predictor of alcohol consumption, problems, and alcohol cravings. It also had the highest internal consistency and test–retest reliability scores. The results for the Alcohol Excitement and Alcohol Approach IATs were also promising but their psychometric properties were less consistent. Although the two IATs were positively correlated with all of the drinking outcome variables, they did not consistently predict unique variance in those variables after controlling for explicit measures. They also had relatively lower internal consistencies and test–retest reliabilities. Ultimately, results suggested that implicit drinking identity may be a useful tool for predicting alcohol consumption, problems, and cravings and a potential target for prevention and intervention efforts.

This study evaluates the cognitive model of anxiety by investigating treatment-related changes in automatic associations to evaluate schematic processing. Spider-phobic participants (n = 31) and healthy controls (n = 30) completed fear-based Implicit Association Tests (IATs), which are reaction-time measures that tap implicit associations without requiring conscious introspection. The specific tasks involved classifying pictures of snakes and spiders along with semantic categorizations (good vs.bad, afraid vs. unafraid, danger vs. safety, and disgusting vs. appealing). Phobic individuals were assessed before and after group-based exposure treatment and 2 months later, controls were assessed at matched time points. Results supported clinical applications for implicit fear associations, including prediction of phobic avoidance, and treatment sensitivity of the fear- and disgust-specific automatic associations.

The related emotions of disgust and fear are examined in their full range from normal to pathological. We propose that disgust plays a functional role in some anxiety disorders, specific phobias in particular. Basic research in disgust and fear is reviewed, and these emotions are contrasted in terms of their functional value, behavioral intentions, physiological processes, and acquisition mechanisms. Cognitive appraisals of danger and contamination are discussed as a mechanism for the role of disgust in some anxiety disorders. Finally, we evaluate competing explanations regarding the relationship between disgust and fear in these contexts, finding value in the concepts of imprecise emotional labeling and a synergistic model of a bidirectional association between disgust and fear. Implications for treatment are discussed.

This study investigated an implicit measure of cognitive processing, the Implicit Association Test (IAT;