Implicit social cognition: Attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes.

Abstract

Social behavior is ordinarily treated as being under conscious (if not always thoughtful) control. However, considerable evidence now supports the view that social behavior often operates in an implicit or unconscious fashion. The identifying feature of implicit cognition is that past experience influences judgment in a fashion not introspectively known by the actor. The present conclusionthat attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes have important implicit modes of operation-extends both the construct validity and predictive usefulness of these major theoretical constructs of social psychology. Methodologically, this review calls for increased use of indirect measures-which are imperative in studies of implicit cognition. The theorized ordinariness of implicit stereotyping is consistent with recent findings of discrimination by people who explicitly disavow prejudice. The finding that implicit cognitive effects are often reduced by focusing judges' attention on their judgment task provides a basis for evaluating applications (such as affirmative action) aimed at reducing such unintended discrimination.Long before they became central to other areas of psychological theory, concepts of cognitive mediation dominated the analysis of social behavior. The constructs on which this article focuses achieved early prominence in social psychological theory with formulations that were partly (attitude) or entirely (stereotype) cognitive. By the 1930s, Allport (1935) had declared attitude to be social psychology's "most distinctive and indispensable concept" (p. 798), Thurstone (1931;Thurstone & Chave, 1929) had developed quantitatively sophisticated methods for attitude measurement, and Braly (1933, 1935) had introduced a method that is still in use to investigate stereotypes. Self-esteem, an attitudinal construct to which this article gives separate treatment because of its prominence in recent research, also has a long-established history (e.g., James, 1890; see overview in Wylie, 1974Wylie, , 1979.Through much of the period since the 1930s, most social psychologists have assumed that attitudes, and to a lesser extent stereotypes, operate in a conscious mode. This widespread assumption of conscious operation is most evident in the nearuniversal practice of operationalizing attitudes (including selfesteem) and stereotypes with direct (instructed self-report) measures. The pervasiveness of direct measurement for attitudes and stereotypes was documented by Greenwald (1990) and by Banaji and Greenwald (1994) and is further reviewed below. In contrast, this article describes an indirect, unconscious, or implicit mode of operation for attitudes and stereotypes. 1 Anthony G. Greenwald, Department of Psychology, University of Washington; Mahzarin R. Banaji, Department of Psychology, Yale University.Preparation of this report as well as conduct of some of the research reported in it were supported by National Science Foundation Grants DBC-9205890 and DBC-9120987 and by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH-41328. We thank...

Multiple cues in social perception: The time course of processing race and facial expression

“…However, despite the theoretical importance of this issue, little research has simultaneously examined the perception of race and expression. Instead, the majority of previous research has examined these cues in isolation, independent of one another; research on race perception typically examines responses to faces with emotionally neutral expressions (e.g., Devine, Plant, Amodio, Harmon-Jones, & Vance, 2002;Levin, 2000;Greenwald & Banaji, 1995), and research on emotional expression often examines responses to faces depicting only one race (typically Caucasian) (e.g., Eimer, Holmes, & McGlone, 2003;Hansen & Hansen, 1988). While it is necessary to investigate the independent effects of these cues, they are typically perceived simultaneously, making it important to understand how the cues are perceived in combination throughout processing.…”

Lost in dissociation: The main paradigms in unconscious cognition

“…On the contrary, the activation of attitudes and stereotypes, though clearly fast and effortless, shows too large an inter-subject variability to be seen as merely automatic (e.g., Devine & Sharp, 2009 In effect, what an abundance of studies has reported (see, e.g., Greenwald & Banaji, 1995;Payne & Gawronski, 2010) is that these higher thought processes are often unconscious, but this does not allow us to speak straightforwardly of automatisms (e.g., Dijksterhuis, 2010). Even when automaticity does appear to be allied with unconscious processing, it is so in more than one way or degree (Bargh, 1989;.…”

“…The change of focus in unconscious social cognition from automatic behavior to implicit cognition can be attributed to Greenwald and Banaji (1995). In this paper, the authors surveyed the main constructs of social psychology, to wit, attitudes, stereotypes, and self-esteem, from the unifying viewpoint of implicit construct, "the introspectively unidentified (or inaccurately identified) trace of past experience that mediates R" (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995, p. 5), where R names categories of responses.…”

Implicit Gender Bias and the Use of Cardiovascular Tests Among Cardiologists

“…Gender stereotypes have remained remarkably consistent over time, with men traditionally perceived to be stronger (both physically and mentally) and more likely to take risks compared with women and with women perceived to be more emotional and focused on caring for others than men 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. These gender stereotypes are referred to as bias because they create unjust assumptions or decisions about a person 17, 23. Bias has been inferred in prior studies when gender differences in care persist after adjusting for many patient, physician, and health system characteristics 24, 25, 26, 27.…”