The Dominance of Associative Theorizing in Implicit Attitude Research: Propositional and Behavioral Alternatives

Hughes, Sean; Barnes‐Holmes, Dermot; Houwer, Jan De

doi:10.1007/bf03395772

Cited by 136 publications

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“…By relational responses we mean the action of responding to one stimulus in terms of another (e.g., "Unhealthy food is better than Healthy Food"). It has been argued that such responses may be mediated by propositions at the cognitive level of analysis (see Hughes, Barnes-Holmes, & De Houwer, 2011). The important point here, however, is that the intellectual inspiration and theoretical context for the current research was RFT, and more specifically the idea that the automatic responses targeted by the IRAP involve brief and immediate relational responding to the various stimuli presented within the procedure itself.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 93%

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Obesity, food restriction, and implicit attitudes to healthy and unhealthy foods: Lessons learned from the implicit relational assessment procedure

et al. 2016

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. Electronic mail should be sent to sean.hughes@ugent.be. IRAP Food Cognition 2 AbstractIt has been argued that obese individuals evaluate high caloric, palatable foods more positively than their normal weight peers, and that this positivity bias causes them to consume such foods, even when healthy alternatives are available. Yet when self-reported and automatic food preferences are assessed no such evaluative biases tend to emerge. We argue that situational (food deprivation) and methodological factors may explain why implicit measures often fail to discriminate between the food-evaluations of these two groups. Across three studies we manipulated the food deprivation state of clinically obese and normal-weight participants and then exposed them to an indirect procedure (IRAP) and self-report questionnaires. We found that automatic food-related cognition was moderated by a person's weight status and food deprivation state. Our findings suggest that the diagnostic and predictive value of implicit measures may be increased when (a) situational moderators are taken into consideration and (b)we pay greater attention to the different ways in which people automatically relate rather than simply categorize food stimuli. The Western world is currently facing an obesity epidemic. Over the past three decades, obesity rates have exploded at an alarming rate (Finucane et al., 2011), to the point that one in three adults in the United States (Ogden, Carroll, Kit, & Flegal, 2014) as well as one in five Europeans are currently overweight (WHO, 2013). As prevalence rates have grown so too have the health-related, socioeconomic, and psychological costs associated with this phenomenon (Finkelstein, Ruhm, & Kosal, 2005;Wardle & Cooke, 2005). With obesity comes an increased risk of type-II diabetes, adult heart disease, as well as several forms of cancer and premature morbidity (Reilly, et al., 2003;Wang, McPherson, Marsh, Gortmaker, & Brown, 2011). In addition to its economic burden, obesity is also associated with a host of psychosocial problems, including anxiety, depression, and social discrimination (see Puhl & Heuer, 2009; Sutin, Stephan, & Terracciano, 2015;Wang et al., 2011). If we are to design effective interventions to ameliorate or even reverse this epidemic then research will need to elucidate those factors that contribute to the development and maintenance of this phenomenon.One such factor appears to be food choice, and in particular, the excessive consumption of energy dense foods containing high levels of calories, sugars, and fat as well as the under consumption of nutrient dense foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables. Accumulating evidence suggests that obese individuals tend to consume higher levels of fats, sugars, and proteins than their normal-weight counterparts (e.g., Mai et al., 2011;McGloin et al., 2002;Nicklas, Yang, Baranowski, Zakeri, & Berenson, 2003). Several authors have sought to explain this maladaptive pattern of behavior in terms of food-related evaluations. That is, obese individuals are t...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…controlled) (see Gawronski, Brannon, & Bodenhausen, in press;Hughes et al, 2011). Yet growing evidence suggests that humans can automatically relate stimuli in a wide number of ways and that the manner in which stimuli are related often leads to divergent outcomes on implicit and explicit measures.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Obesity, food restriction, and implicit attitudes to healthy and unhealthy foods: Lessons learned from the implicit relational assessment procedure

et al. 2016

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“…In fact, the negative implicit attitude toward smoking as measured by the IAT (a) was more pronounced in the patient group than in the control group and (b) even tended to become more negative from the first to the second test session. While the interpretation of the latter finding is complicated by the fact that a proper control condition is missing, these observations seem to suggest that the IAT was either influenced by automatically activated extrapersonal associations (i.e., knowledge about the fact that smoking is generally viewed as negative in Western societies; see Karpinski and Hilton 2001) or by automatically activated (but personally endorsed) propositional knowledge about the negative consequences of smoking (see Hughes et al 2011). Interestingly, this interpretation would coincide with findings obtained by Chassin et al (2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implicit attitudes towards smoking predict long-term relapse in abstinent smokers

et al. 2015

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Rationale It has previously been argued that implicit attitudes toward substance-related cues drive addictive behavior. Nevertheless, it remains an open question whether behavioral markers of implicit attitude activation can be used to predict long-term relapse. Objectives The main objective of this study was to examine the relationship between implicit attitudes toward smokingrelated cues and long-term relapse in abstaining smokers. Methods Implicit attitudes toward smoking-related cues were assessed by means of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and the evaluative priming task (EPT). Both measures were completed by a group of smokers who volunteered to quit smoking (patient group) and a group of nonsmokers (control group). Participants in the patient group completed these measures twice: once prior to smoking cessation and once after smoking cessation. Relapse was assessed by means of short telephone survey, 6 months after completion of the second test session.Results EPT scores obtained prior to smoking cessation were related to long-term relapse and correlated with self-reported nicotine dependence as well as daily cigarette consumption. In contrast, none of the behavioral outcome measures were found to correlate with the IAT scores. Conclusions These findings corroborate the idea that implicit attitudes toward substance-related cues are critically involved in long-term relapse. A potential explanation for the divergent findings obtained with the IAT and EPT is provided.

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“…The principle underlying the IAT is that it compares the relative strength of association of the concept of exercise with positive attributes (e. g., good, like, pleasurable) and negative attributes (e. g., bad, disliked, unpleasant). Despite methodological criticism of the IAT (e. g., Hughes, Barnes-Holmes, & De Houwer, 2011) and perhaps due to the relative robustness of its measurements and ease of administration, the IAT is regarded as the method of choice for assessing automatic evaluations (Nosek, Greenwald, & Banaji, 2007), especially in the domain of applied social cognition research. In our context, using the IAT brings the advantage that measurements adequately reflect the automaticity of the valuative process.…”

Section: Preliminary Empirical Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Affective–Reflective Theory of physical inactivity and exercise

Brand

Ekkekakis

2017

Ger J Exerc Sport Res

386

312

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The Dominance of Associative Theorizing in Implicit Attitude Research: Propositional and Behavioral Alternatives

Cited by 136 publications

References 125 publications

Obesity, food restriction, and implicit attitudes to healthy and unhealthy foods: Lessons learned from the implicit relational assessment procedure

Obesity, food restriction, and implicit attitudes to healthy and unhealthy foods: Lessons learned from the implicit relational assessment procedure

Implicit attitudes towards smoking predict long-term relapse in abstinent smokers

Affective–Reflective Theory of physical inactivity and exercise

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