Dual Attitudes
The concept of dual attitudes is based on the belief that within the mind there are
different evaluations of the same attitude object. The first of these evaluations is called
the implicit attitude, and is an automatic response to the attitude object; it is
nonconscious, and uncontrolled. The second evaluation is called the explicit attitude, and
is a response that is both controlled and conscious (Baumeister and Bushman, 2008).
These evaluations occur separately and independently of one another, and can serve
different functions. It is possible for an individual to have conflicting implicit and
explicit attitudes, though it is rare for the individual to be aware of the conflict; the
implicit attitude goes unnoticed, and the individual believes the conscious, explicit
attitude is the only one present (Baumeister and Bushman, 2008).
Measuring Implicit Attitudes
While explicit, conscious attitudes can be fairly easily measured, it is much harder to
measure nonconscious, implicit attitudes. Over the past years, however, social
psychologists have developed several methods to try to accomplish this goal. One way to
measure implicit attitude is through response-latency measures, which involves the time
delay that occurs before a response. It is unclear whether this is an effective way to
measure implicit responses, due to a lack of conclusive evidence as to whether there is a
correlation between implicit attitudes and time (Cunningham et al., 2001). The semantic
priming technique is another method for measuring implicit attitudes, (Neely, 1877). In
1986, Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell and Karde came up with a new technique, naming it
the Evaluative Priming Technique, which was a variation of the semantic priming
technique (Cunningham et al., 2001). By 1998, Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz had
developed the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which compares the relative strengths of
associations between the object eliciting the attitude, and the ideas of both “good” and
“bad,” (Cunningham et al., 2001).
Experimental Findings
One study that investigated the distinction between explicit and implicit attitudes was
done by Cunningham et al. in 2001. This study used racial attitudes to explore different
methods of measuring the beliefs that lie outside of conscious thought, and then
compared them to explicit attitudes. Three different methods of measuring implicit
attitudes were used: (1) the response-window procedure, which increases the degree of
both subliminal and supraliminal priming effects; (2) the Implicit Association Test (IAT),
and (3) an overlapping method that had a response-window included in the IAT. Explicit
attitudes were measured by asking questions taken from the Modern Racism Scale;
participants were asked to rate their level of agreement to each of the statements, a 1
being strong disagreement, a 6 strong agreement.
In the session using the response-window method, participants were shown either a black
or white face for two hundred milliseconds, followed by a blank screen for another
hundred milliseconds. They were then asked to evaluate specific words as being positive
or negative within a certain time limit. They were told that they had to get at least 70%
correct, and were given feedback intermittently. The independent variable was the race
of the face shown, and the dependent variable was whether or not the participant could
correctly identify the following as positive or negative. For the IAT method, participants
used two keys to evaluate whether faces were black or white, and whether words were
positive or negative. In half of the trials, one key was designated for white faces and
positive words, while the other key was for black faces and negative words. In the other
half of the trials, one key was for white faces and negative words, and the other for black
faces and positive words. The participants were told when their answers were incorrect,
and were given the chance to correct their answer. The independent variable was the
combination of face and word type per key, and the dependent variable was the response
time of the participant. The response-window IAT session was almost the same as the
IAT session, except that the participants were given a timeframe in which they had to
respond, and they were not given feedback on their responses. The independent variable
here was the same as in the IAT session, but the dependent variable became whether the
participant could correctly identify the faces and words correctly (Cunningham et al.,
2001).
The results of the IAT session showed that on average, participants took longer to
respond to trials with a white face and negative word combination than to a white face
and positive word combination. The average response for the first combination, which
also involved a black face and a positive word, was 743.9 seconds. The average response
for the second combination, which involved a black face and negative word, was only
612.55 seconds (Cunningham et al., 2001). The response-window method showed that
participants made more errors when white faces were matched with negative words (on
average, only 71% were correct) than when white faces were matched with positive
words (on average, these trials were 76% correct). The experimenters determined that
this meant that participants were more likely to pair white faces with positive words, and
correspondingly, black faces with negative words (Cunningham et al., 2001). The
response- window IAT session also showed that there were more errors when white faces
were paired with negative words (on average, these trials were only 76%). When white
faces were paired with positive words, and therefore black faces with negative words, the
participants were, on average, 83% correct). All of these results showed that participants
preferred white faces to black faces (Cunningham et al., 2001).
The results of the Modern Racism Scale showed that participants gave an average rating
of 2.78; the midpoint of the scale was 3.5. This meant that the participants, on average,
disagreed with prejudicial statements made against African-Americans, and therefore did
not have prejudicial explicit attitudes (Cunningham et al., 2001). This directly goes
against the results of the other three sessions of the experiment, which measured the
implicit attitudes to be pro-white. This showed clear evidence for the separation of
implicit and explicit attitudes, and how they can directly conflict with one another.
Critiques of the IAT
One common critique of the IAT can be manipulated by unrelated factors, (Baumeister
and Bushman, 2008). This theory is brought into deeper detail by Fiedler, Klaus,
Messner, Claude, Bluemke, and Matthias, who provide a list of problems that the IAT
can run into (Fiedler et al., 2006). They argued that the IAT has five main flaws when it
was used to make diagnostic inferences. The first problem is that there is a difference
between casual and diagnostic inferences, and it is difficult to tell which one of these the
Implicit Association Test makes. They also were uncertain of the capability and strength
of the more fundamental association model that it was based on, calling this the second
flaw. The third problem with the IAT is that there is not a more basic testable model with
which the inferences can be compared. The fourth flaw is that it is very challenging to
interpret the scores produced by the IAT, and the final problem is that the test can easily
be manipulated so that the processing can be faked or changed (Fiedler et al., 2006). The
conclusion that is reached is that there are many existing factors independent of whatever
attitude may be under assessment by the IAT, and these factors can significantly
manipulate the scores and results of the test. This is not to say, however, that the test is
unusable, or entirely inaccurate.
Works Cited
Baumeister, Roy F., and Brad J. Bushman. Social Psychology and Human Nature. United
States: Thomson Wadsworth, 2008. 226-227.
Cunningham, William A., Kristopher J. Preacher, and Mahzarin R. Banaji. "Implicit
Attitude Measures: Consistency, Stability, and Convergent Validity." Psychological
Science 12 (2001): 163-170.
Fiedler, Klaus, Messner, Claude, Bluemke, and Matthias. "Unresolved Problems with the
“I”, the “a”, and the “T”: a Logical and Psychometric Critique of the Implicit Association
Test (IAT)." European Review of Social Psychology 17 (2006): 74-147.
Works Consulted
Rudman, Laurie A. "Sources of Implicit Attitudes." Current Directions in Psychological
Science 13 (2004): 79-82.