Affective Focus Increases the Concordance Between Implicit and Explicit Attitudes

Abstract

Two attitude dichotomies – implicit versus explicit and affect versus cognition – are presumed to be related. Following a manipulation of attitudinal focus (affective or cognitive), participants completed two implicit measures (Implicit Association Test and the Sorting Paired Features task) and three explicit attitude measures toward cats/dogs (Study 1) and gay/straight people (Study 2). Based on confirmatory factor analysis, both studies showed that explicit attitudes were more related to implicit attitudes in an affective focus than in a cognitive focus. We suggest that, although explicit evaluations can be meaningfully parsed into affective and cognitive components, implicit evaluations are more related to affective than cognitive components of attitudes.

Implicit attitudes and road safety behaviors. The helmet-use case

“…This result is consistent with what some theorists in this area have suggested (e.g., Smith and Nosek, 2011). One possible explanation is that the IAT measures responses based mainly on emotional information and, consequently, correlations increase when the self-reporting instrument is focused on the emotional component of the attitudes (Hofmann et al, 2005).…”

Reaching for the (Product) Stars: Measuring Recognition and Approach Speed to Get Insights Into Consumer Choice

“…As in Study 1, we expected that differences in approach movement times, but not in recognition times, would predict choice. Moreover, in line with previous studies that demonstrated the influence of impulses under an affective compared to a cognitive focus (e.g., Scarabis, Florack, & Gosejohann, 2006;Smith & Nosek, 2011), we hypothesized that approach movement times measured with the RaBAT would show a stronger unique contribution to the prediction of a choice between fruit and chocolate when individuals focused on their affect than when they thought about the reasons for their choice.…”

Awareness of implicit attitudes.

“…Notwithstanding these considerations, research addressing people’s awareness of their implicit attitudes has primarily focused on correlations between implicit and explicit attitudes, and specifically on the factors that impact the magnitude of these correlations (Gschwendner at al., 2006; Jordan, Whitfield, & Zeigler-Hill, 2007; Ranganath, Smith, & Nosek, 2008; Richetin, Perugini, Perugini, Adjali, Hurling, 2007; Smith & Nosek, 2011). For example, Jordan et al (2007) found greater correspondence between implicit and explicit measures of self-esteem for people who scored higher on faith in intuition (i.e., chronically viewing their intuitions as more valid).…”