Citation

Marini M, Rubichi S, Sartori G. Exp. Psychol. 2012; 59(6): 348-354.

Affiliation

Department of Communication and Economics, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Hogrefe Publishing)

DOI

10.1027/1618-3169/a000163

PMID

22750742

Abstract

Explicit measures can be affected by self-involvement in processing of a message (Johnson & Eagly, 1989). Here, we show that self-involvement in a counter-stereotypical message also influences implicit measures such as the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). In our study, racial attitudes changed only after reading a counter-stereotypical scenario in which participants were asked to imagine themselves as victims of an assault as opposed to simply imagine an assault to a person. This shift did not depend on evaluative instructions and it was transient as it was no longer present after 1 week. These results suggest that the self-involvement might be an important factor in shifting implicit measures.

Language: en