Lecture 2: Implicit attitudes

Question 1

Why are implicit attitudes important?

Answer 1

Explicit (direct) self-report measures have a lot of drawbacks:
- it rewuires conscious access and willingness to retrieve attitudes
- self-report bias
- tap into elaborated thought instead of spontaneous reactions

These restrict predictive validity

Question 2

How to measure implicit attitudes?

Answer 2

1. early approaches to prevent self-report biases (indirect (vs direct) self-assessments of attitudes
2. error-choice techniques (knowledge tests; choose between 2 answer options, both answers wrong, but either favorable/unfavorable biased for product
3. Reaction time-based techniques
4. implicit vs explicit measures (no awareness of what is being assessed, assessed content is NOT available for intros and it is more difficult to fake)

Question 3

Give an example of how the Affect Misattribution Procedure works

Answer 3

A flower is shown, followed by an black screen, chinese figure and ends with a masked screen. Then the participant has to tell if the chinese figure is pleasant or not.

This test is compared to the same test, but this time the flower is a bug (which is unpleasant)

Question 4

Give an example of the Implicit Association Test

Answer 4

There are several round.

First it’s weapons and black americans for the left key (toets) and harmless item and white americans for the right key.

You have to select as fast as you can if the picture is weapon/harmless item/black american/white american.

Then the combination is switched:
White american + weapon
Black american + harmless item.

This repeats a couple of times, until implicit behavior is tested enough.

Question 5

How does the Implicit Association Test work?

Answer 5

Responses to categories that are associated in memory will be faster than responses to categories not (or less) associated in memory

Question 6

Maison et al. | Attitudes toward 2 yogurt brand: Danone and Bakoma

What was tested and what are the results?

Answer 6

Attitudes towards 2 yogurt brand: Danone and Bakoma

Questionnaire: explicit attitudes, preferences and current use

IAT: picture of the yogurt brand combined with pleasant/unpleasant words

Results:
Danone users: They prefered Danone

Bakoma users: They prefered Bakoma

This was for both implicit and explicit attitudes

Question 7

Vantomme et al. | Attitudes towards fair-traide brand

What was tested and what are the results?

Answer 7

Attitudes towards fair-traide brand

Questionnaire: explicit attitude, buying behavior
IAT: faire-trade and traditional product combined with pleasant/unpleasant words

Results
Explicit attitude: more positive towards fair-trade

implicit attitude:
- buyers of fair-trade products were more positive (when seeing the pleasant word with fair-trade product)
- NON buyers of fair-trade products were more negative (when seeing the pleasant word with fair-trade product)

Question 8

Gibson | Classical conditioning and implicit attitudes

What was tested in experiment 1?

Answer 8

By pairing product with pleasant things, hopefullt more likely to buy the product

3(pre-test score: Coke, pepsi, neutral) x 2)(conditioning group: coke positive, pepsi positive) design

Pre-test: measure explicit attitude
Conditioning task
Pro-test: measure explicit attitude
IAT: Coke-pepsi

Results
NO classical conditioning effect on explicit attitudes (no effect for familiar stimuli)
Succesful classical conditioning on implicit attitudes, BUT ONLY for initial neutral

Question 9

Gibson | Classical conditioning and implicit attitudes

What was tested in experiment 2?

Answer 9

2 (cognitive load: yes or no) x 2 (conditioning: pepsi positive, coke positive) design

With only neutral people!
Cognitive load: remembering 8 digits

Results
No effects on explicit attitudes
Low cognitive load: IAT unrelated to product choice, explicit attitudes predominant predictor
High cognitive load: IAT related to product choice, implicit attitudes improve prediction

Question 10

Explain the Additive Model

Answer 10

If consumer behavior is partly infuenced by spontaneous processes (implicit attitudes), implicit measures should explain unique variance over and above explicit measures

Mixed evidence for this:
- implicit adds to predicition in some, but fails in others
- Explicit attitudes = dominant predictor

Question 11

Moderator Model: under what circumstances do implicit measures predict behavior?

Name the 2 models

Answer 11

MODE model (Motivation and opportunity as determinants model)

RIM model (Reflective-impulsive model)