Explicit and implicit measures Flashcards
explicit measures of attitudes
Equal appearing intervals
Likert scale
Semantic differential
equal appearing intervals
Thurstone & Chave
Classifies self-report items according to the degree of valence, prior to asking respondent to indicate their agreement or disagreement with each item
Likert scales
Participant indicates extent of agreement with statements that express positive or negative sentiments towards attitude object
Limitations of Likert scales
Cannot be used to compare attitude objects: numbers produced by summation across items are not “real”
semantic differentials
self-report measure that uses responses to bipolar scales anchored by oppositely valenced adjectives
advantage of semantic differentials
can compare across attitude objects because the method measures attitudes to a variety of objects along a common scale with matching items
limitation of semantic differential
May be instances where the same adjective could mean different things for different AOs – usefulness for comparing across objects must be considered in light of potential differences between AOs being compared
e.g., cold/warm would likely mean different things for “friend” and “Canada”
considerations of explicit measures
Assumes awareness of attitude – may not be as clear cut
Impression management – social desirability; cultural values
Item presentation: finer distinctions in levels of positivity; different responses depending on whether asked to rate attitudes relative to other people’s
implicit measures of attitudes
Evaluative priming
Implicit association test
Affective misattribution paradigm
Personalised IAT
Evaluative priming
Fazio et al. 91995)
Measures the relative facilitation of responses by evaluative primes.
Measures the speed with which people classify evaluative stimuli after seeing evaluatively congruent or incongruent primes.
Based on the accessibility definition of attitudes: strength of association reflects accessibility of attitude from memory and likelihood that the evaluation is spontaneously activated when we encounter the AO.
People classify only the adjectives.
example of a study of evaluative priming
Fazio et al. (1995)
Among White participants, the Black face prime produced faster responding to negative adjectives and slower responses to positive adjectives relative to responses with a White prime
Implicit association test
Greenwald et al. (1998)
Assess attitudes by examining the effects of pairing attitude object targets with positive or negative targets in a task that categorises the identity or valence of the targets.
Participants classify adjectives AND attitude objects.
Compare response latency between critical trials - first trial the adjective is compatible with AO, second it is incompatible (so responses should be slower)
criticism of the IAT
does it measure implicit associations or cultural associations? – personalised IAT developed in response
People can exert some control over the influence of their attitudinal biases on responses in the IAT after training
Scores on IAT more malleable than initially assumed (Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001)
What did Dasgupta & Greenwald (2001) show?
IAT scores are more malleable than initially assumed.
Assessed whether showing pictures of liked vs disliked Whites/Black influenced racial attitudes.
Ps in the pro-Black condition (saw admired Black individuals and disliked Whites) showed less prejudicial attitudes than Ps in pro-White and control (shown flowers and insects) conditions.
AMP
Affective misattribution paradigm (Payne et al., 2008)
Complements the EP approach.
Shown AO over number of trials immediately followed by ambiguous stimulus and asked to quickly rate pleasantness of ambiguous stimulus.
Rate ambiguous stimuli more positively after positive AOs.
