In two experiments, affect-based and cognition-based attitudes towardaperson wereinduced by varyingthesequenceofaffective and cognitive information presented to subjects while holding the content of these communications constant. In Experiment 1, affective and cognitive persuasive appeals were created by means of a similar order manipulation, whereas in Experiment 2, affective and cognitive persuasive appeals were induced through a focus manipulation. Results indicated that affect-based attitudes were most effectively changed by affective persuasive appeals, whether these appeals were produced by an order manipulation or a focus manipulation. Affect-based attitudes also tended to be expressed with greater confidence than cognition-based attitudes.
In this paper, we argue that four interlocking barriers stand in the way of research scientists who seek to understand human social psychology. The first barrier is the political ideology of most social psychologists, which is typically on the left (or liberal) side of the spectrum. The second barrier is a view of human nature common among people on the political left, which is that we are born without any predilections to behave in a particular manner. According to this view, our mind is a blank slate at birth and is corrupted solely by the ills of bad environments or societies. The third barrier is a tendency to reject theories and findings that might contravene the “blank slate” view of human nature, particularly theories and findings that arise from evolutionary approaches to human behavior. The fourth barrier is a collection of evolved tendencies that prevent investigators from being dispassionate seekers of scientific truth. These include our evolved tendency to be more focused on persuasion than truth-seeking, to be concerned with the maintenance of our prestige as scientists, and to form and maintain coalitions that compete with each other. We provide initial evidence for some of these possibilities with data gathered from a survey of 335 established social psychologists. We conclude with the irony that our evolved psychology may interfere with the scientific understanding of our evolved psychology.
The meaning and importance of implicit prejudice is a source of considerable debate. One way to advance this debate is to assess whether implicit prejudice can predict independent variance, beyond that predicted by explicit prejudice, in meaningful and unambiguous behaviors or behavioral intentions. In the current research, drug and alcohol nurses reported their level of stress working with injecting drug users, their job satisfaction, their explicit prejudice toward injecting drug users, and their intentions to leave drug and alcohol nursing. The nurses also completed the Single Category Implicit Association Test, which measured their implicit prejudice toward injecting drug users. Analyses revealed that implicit prejudice was a significant mediator, beyond explicit prejudice and job satisfaction, of the relation between job stress and intention to change jobs.
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