The relationship between implicit intergroup attitudes and beliefs.

Intergroup attitudes (evaluations) are generalized valence attributions to social groups (e.g., white-bad/Asian-good), whereas intergroup beliefs (stereotypes) are specific trait attributions to social groups (e.g., white-dumb/Asian-smart). When explicit (self-report) measures are used, attitudes toward and beliefs about the same social group are often related to each other but can also be dissociated. The present work used three approaches (correlational, experimental, and archival) to conduct a systematic investigation of the relationship between implicit (indirectly revealed) intergroup attitudes and beliefs. In study 1 (n = 1,942), we found significant correlations and, in some cases, evidence for redundancy, between Implicit Association Tests (IATs) measuring attitudes toward and beliefs about the same social groups (mean r = 0.31, 95% confidence interval: [0.24; 0.39]). In study 2 (n = 383), manipulating attitudes via evaluative conditioning produced parallel changes in belief IATs, demonstrating that implicit attitudes can causally drive implicit beliefs when information about the specific semantic trait is absent. In study 3, we used word embeddings derived from a large corpus of online text to show that the relative distance of 22 social groups from positive vs. negative words (reflecting generalized attitudes) was highly correlated with their distance from warm vs. cold, and even competent vs. incompetent, words (reflecting specific beliefs). Overall, these studies provide convergent evidence for tight connections between implicit attitudes and beliefs, suggesting that the dissociations observed using explicit measures may arise uniquely from deliberate judgment processes.

Gender Stereotypes in Natural Language: Word Embeddings Show Robust Consistency Across Child and Adult Language Corpora of More Than 65 Million Words.

Stereotypes are associations between social groups and semantic attributes that are widely shared within societies. The spoken and written language of a society affords a unique way to measure the magnitude and prevalence of these widely shared collective representations. Here, we used word embeddings to systematically quantify gender stereotypes in language corpora that are unprecedented in size (65+ million words) and scope (child and adult conversations, books, movies, TV). Across corpora, gender stereotypes emerged consistently and robustly for both theoretically selected stereotypes (e.g., work-home) and comprehensive lists of more than 600 personality traits and more than 300 occupations. Despite underlying differences across language corpora (e.g., time periods, formats, age groups), results revealed the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes in every corpus. Using gender stereotypes as the focal issue, we unite 19th-century theories of collective representations and 21st-century evidence on implicit social cognition to understand the subtle yet persistent presence of collective representations in language.

On the neural implausibility of the modular mind: Evidence for distributed construction dissolves boundaries between perception, cognition, and emotion.

Firestone & Scholl (F&S) rely on three problematic assumptions about the mind (modularity, reflexiveness, and context-insensitivity) to argue cognition does not fundamentally influence perception. We highlight evidence indicating that perception, cognition, and emotion are constructed through overlapping, distributed brain networks characterized by top-down activity and context-sensitivity. This evidence undermines F&S's ability to generalize from case studies to the nature of perception.

Social-psychological evidence for the effective updating of implicit attitudes.

Recent findings in social psychology show how implicit affective responses can be changed, leading to strong, fast, and durable updating. This work demonstrates that new information viewed as diagnostic or which prompts reinterpretations of previous learning produces fast revision, suggesting two factors that might be leveraged in clinical settings. Reconsolidation provides a plausible route for making such reasoning possible.

How effectively can implicit evaluations be updated? Using evaluative statements after aversive repeated evaluative pairings.

Implicit evaluations (attitudes) are often described as resistant to change, especially when they were initially formed in a seemingly associative manner, such as via repeated evaluative pairings (REP), and new learning is created via propositional material, such as evaluative statements (ES). The present research (total N = 2,124) tested the responsiveness of implicit evaluations instantiated via REP to updating via different types of ES. In Experiment 1, initial learning was created via repeatedly pairing a novel target with strongly negative stimuli (screams) in an aversive REP (A-REP) task. Subsequent ES of opposing valence providing diagnostic information about the target's behavior substantially updated implicit (IAT) evaluations. In Experiment 2, behavioral ES resulted in successful updating after A-REP whether or not they provided an explanation for the initial A-REP learning. A previously unobtained result emerged in Experiment 3 showing that updating was durable even after 1 day. Finally, in Experiment 4, implicit evaluations were updated via diagnostic behavioral ES, but not via an ES instruction to suppose that different pairings had occurred during A-REP. Taken together, these experiments challenge associative theories of implicit evaluation by demonstrating that diagnostic behavioral statements can durably override the effects of initial learning on implicit evaluations, even if such initial learning is aversive and involves direct experience with stimulus pairings. Moreover, by showing that verbal manipulations based on diagnostic behavior but not a mere supposition instruction had impact, the present project advances theory by starting to identify the nature of learning that can adaptively update social impressions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Updating implicit impressions: New evidence on intentionality and the affect misattribution procedure.

Recent work has shown that implicit first impressions of other people can be rapidly updated when new information about them is highly diagnostic or provides a reinterpretation of the basis of prior belief. The Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP; Payne, Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart, 2005) is one prominent implicit measure that has been widely used in this and other work. However, the status of the AMP as a measure of unintentional responding has been a matter of debate, which necessarily also raises questions about the "implicitness" of the updated responses within recent person impression research. In re-analyses of published work, we identify multimodal distributions of AMP responses that raise concerns about potential intentional influences on this task. Drawing on 8 new studies, however, we find that such patterns are not likely attributable to intentional responding (Studies 1, 2A-2B), and that methodological modifications to the AMP procedure eliminate bimodality but do not eliminate effects of rapid revision (Studies 3A-6). Furthermore, these modifications provide evidence that the rapid-revision effects reported in earlier work can be produced under suboptimal conditions such as distraction and increased vigilance against prime influence. We advocate for the continued use of judgmental misattribution as a valuable tool in the arsenal of implicit social cognition researchers, but also encourage researchers to continue to examine the distributional patterns of measures like the AMP, and what those patterns might reflect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Reversing Implicit First Impressions through Reinterpretation after a Two-Day Delay.

People are adept at forming impressions of others, but how easily can impressions be updated? Although implicit first impressions have been characterized as difficult to overturn, recent work shows that they can be reversed through reinterpretation of earlier learning. However, such reversal has been demonstrated only in the same experimental session in which the impression formed, suggesting that implicit updating might be possible only within a brief temporal window, before impressions are consolidated and when memory about the initial information is strongest. Implicit impressions may be unable to be revised when reinterpreting details are learned later, due to memory consolidation or forgetting of the details to be reinterpreted. This study tested whether implicit first impressions can be reversed through reinterpretation after a two-day delay following the initial formation. Results showed that implicit revision emerged after the delay, even among those with poor explicit recall or who were not cued to recall. We discuss implications for theory on impression formation and updating.

Can we undo our first impressions? The role of reinterpretation in reversing implicit evaluations.

Little work has examined whether implicit evaluations can be effectively "undone" after learning new revelations. Across 7 experiments, participants fully reversed their implicit evaluation of a novel target person after reinterpreting earlier information. Revision occurred across multiple implicit evaluation measures (Experiments 1a and 1b), and only when the new information prompted a reinterpretation of prior learning versus did not (Experiment 2). The updating required active consideration of the information, as it emerged only with at least moderate cognitive resources (Experiment 3). Self-reported reinterpretation predicted (Experiment 4) and mediated (Experiment 5) revised implicit evaluations beyond the separate influence of how thoughtfully participants considered the new information in general. Finally, the revised evaluations were durable 3 days later (Experiment 6). We discuss how these results inform existing theoretical models, and consider implications for future research.