On implicit evaluations

1. On implicit evaluations Melissa J. Ferguson Cornell University

2. On implicit evaluations:“Phil” effects with “Tony” processing constraints Melissa J. Ferguson Cornell University

3. Implicit attitudes • Attitudes toward stimuli that are generated spontaneously and sometimes nonconsciously

4. Implicit attitudes • Attitudes toward stimuli that are generated spontaneously and sometimes nonconsciously • Typically generated within milliseconds after perceiving the respective stimuli

5. Morris et al., 1999 • Murphy & Zajonc, 1993 • Niedenthal, 1990 • Öhman, 1986 • Whalen et al., 1998 • Winkielman et al., 2005

6. Implicit attitudes are functional • Deliver important information about what is desirable or harmful quickly and spontaneously • Campbell, 1974 • Damasio, 1999 • Dennett, 1995 • Fazio, 1989 • Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1990 • LeDoux, 1996 • Smith, Bruner, & White, 1956

7. Implicit attitudes are functional • Implicit attitudes are also sensitive to the current relevance of the stimulus • They reflect not only whether a stimulus has been desirable on average, but whether it is particularly desirable at that very moment, given our goals • Seibt, Häfner, & Deutsch (in press) • Sherman et al. (2003) • Ferguson & Bargh (2004)

8. Do they reflect current desirability? • Seibt et al. (in press) • Will hunger influence implicit attitudes toward food? sandwich wonderful sandwich horrible

9. Do they reflect current desirability? • Seibt et al. (in press) • Will hunger influence implicit attitudes toward food? sandwich wonderful sandwich horrible Difference in speed of response

10. Implicit positivity toward food-related stimuli Seibt et al. (in press) Facilitation (ms) Sated Hungry

11. Implicit positivity toward food-related stimuli Seibt et al. (in press) Facilitation (ms) Sated Hungry

12. Implicit positivity toward food-related stimuli Seibt et al. (in press) Facilitation (ms) Sated Hungry

13. Do they reflect current desirability? • Ferguson & Bargh (2004) • Will playing a word game influence people’s implicit attitudes toward game-relevant stimuli? • If they have a goal to do well vs. not • If they are finished vs. still playing the game

14. Implicit positivity toward game-relevant stimuli Ferguson and Bargh (2004) Facilitation (ms) Finished Still Playing

15. Implicit positivity toward game-relevant stimuli Ferguson and Bargh (2004) Facilitation (ms) Finished Still Playing

16. Implicit positivity toward game-relevant stimuli Ferguson and Bargh (2004) Facilitation (ms) Finished Still Playing

17. Implicit evaluative readiness • When a goal is active, we implicitly evaluate goal-relevant stimuli more positively • Without much conscious thought or intention, we become evaluatively ready to pursue our current goal • Two questions about this phenomenon

18. Question 1 - How conscious? • Evaluative readiness seems functional because it means that we can assess the current relevance of a stimulus in the blink of an eye • Within 150 ms after we encounter a stimulus, we have constructed it in a way that facilitates our current goal • (e.g., Lewin, 1936; Glenberg, 1997; Smith & Semin, 2004) • But how much conscious deliberation and thought is actually required for this kind of readiness?

19. Question 1 - How conscious? • In all previous studies, even though the attitudes were implicit, the goal was fully conscious • When in a conscious goal state, people ruminate about the goal (e.g., Bandura, 1997; Oettingen & Gollwitzer, 2001, 2002) • Participants may have implicitly evaluated the goal-relevant stimuli as positive only because they were thinking consciously about their utility beforehand • Do people become evaluative ready even for a nonconsciously activated goal?

20. Question 1 - How conscious? • Although the goal-relevant stimuli were evaluated in an implicit fashion, they were still supraliminally presented and thus consciously perceived • Participants may have employed strategic, goal-relevant processing at some point(e.g., Klauer, Roßnagel, Musch, 1997 ) • Does evaluative readiness emerge even in response to subliminal stimuli?

21. Question 2 - How functional? • Should everyone show this kind of implicit preparedness? • Research would suggest that only those who are successful at a goal should show implicit evaluative readiness to pursue it

22. Question 2 - How functional? • Implicit attitudes reflect behavioral tendencies • The more (and the more often) one shows implicit positivity toward a stimulus, the more that person should approach it • (e.g., Custers & Aarts, 2007; Fazio & Olsen, 2003; Rydell & McConnell, 2006; Petty, Fazio, & Briñol, in press; Wittenbrink & Schwarz, 2007) • Those who show increased implicit positivity toward goal-relevant stimuli when a goal is active should be more likely to “approach” them and succeed at the goal • Evaluative readiness for a goal as an implicit signature of successful pursuit of that goal

23. Question 2 - How functional? • Implicit attitudes also increase respective behaviors • Increased implicit positivity toward a stimulus should increase motivation and approach behaviors toward it • (e.g., Custers & Aarts, 2005) • Those whose attitudes are generated implicitly (versus explicitly) should have an easier time enacting corresponding judgments and behaviors (e.g., Fazio, 1989; Fazio et al., 1992; Fazio & Powell, 1997) • Evaluative readiness for a goal as an implicit tool for the successful pursuit of that goal

24. Question 2 - How functional? • Research suggests that evaluative readiness may be both an implicit signature and tool of successful regulation • Those who are successful at a goal should be the most likely to show this kind of implicit readiness

25. Overview of research • Question 1 - How conscious? • Goal was nonconsciously activated • Goal-relevant stimuli presented subliminally • Question 2 - How functional? • Goal was difficult (variability of skill) • Skill measured objectively and subjectively

26. Overview of research • Experiment 1 • Academic achievement goal • Implicit attitudes toward: • Grades • Library • Books

27. Experiment 1 • Nonconscious goal priming • Scrambled sentence task • Academic goal (e.g., smart, graduation, achievement) • Control 1 - No goal (e.g., new, outside, moving) • Control 2 - Social goal (e.g., friends, laughing, social) • Subliminal attitude measure • Demographic questions • GPA used as criterion of skill in the academic domain

28. Experiment 1 • Subliminal evaluative priming paradigm • Olson & Fazio, 2002 • Primes presented subliminally • Goal-relevant: grades, books, library • Control: chair, window, sky, etc. • Targets presented supraliminally • Positive adjectives (e.g., wonderful) • Negative adjectives (e.g., awful)

29. Example trial &!%$}@# 56 ms * grades 28 ms - “Tony unconscious” &!%$}@# 42 ms time 98 ms wonderful Response

30. Experiment 1 • Design • Goal priming • Academic achievement • Control 1 (No goal) • Control 2 (Social goal) • Skill • High • Low

31. Experiment 1 • Hypothesis • Those in academic goal condition should implicitly evaluate the academic primes more positively • Only those who are highly skilled

32. Experiment 1 • Results • Implicit positivity scores • Difference score that reflects how much academic primes facilitated RTs to positive vs. negative targets • Difference score for control primes used as covariate • Significant interaction between goal and skill • F(2,79) = 4.08, p = .02

33. Implicit positivity toward goal-relevant primes by goal priming and skill (Ferguson, under review)

34. Implicit positivity toward goal-relevant primes by goal priming and skill (Ferguson, under review)

35. Implicit positivity toward goal-relevant primes by goal priming and skill (Ferguson, under review)

36. Experiment 1 • Conclusions • Evaluative readiness emerged only for highly skilled • Even though goal was nonconsciously activated and stimuli were subliminal (or, very minimally processed)

37. Experiment 1 • Remaining questions • High and low skill people may differ in their beliefs about the utility of the goal-relevant primes • Next experiment looks at implicit attitudes toward words related to the goal itself, rather than means • Does skill predict evaluative readiness even while holding (conscious) motivation constant? • Motivation is included as a covariate

38. Experiment 1 • Remaining questions • How do we know that a goal is being activated? • Aarts, Gollwitzer, & Hassin (2004) • Bargh et al. (2001) • Chartrand & Bargh (1996) • Kawada, Gollwitzer, & Bargh (2004) • Still, how do we know that these effects result from the activation of a goal?

39. Experiment 1 • Remaining questions • Goals have been distinguished from other constructs by their specific effects on behavior • Semantic priming effects decrease rapidly • (e.g., Higgins, Bargh, & Lombardi, 1985; Srull & Wyer, 1979) • Goal strength either stays the same or increases over the same short period of time • (e.g., Atkinson & Birch, 1970; Bargh et al., 2001)

40. Overview of research • Experiment 2 • Academic achievement goal • Implicit attitudes toward achievement

41. Experiment 2 • Nonconscious goal priming • Word search puzzle • Achievement (e.g., master, succeed, strive, achieve) • Control (e.g., plant, carpet, ranch, shampoo) • Subliminal attitude measure • Immediately or after a delay (map task) • Demographic questions about skill and motivation

42. Experiment 2 • Evaluative priming paradigm • Subliminally presented primes • Goal-relevant: achievement • Control: chair, window, sky, etc. • Targets • Positive and negative adjectives

43. Experiment 2 • Questionnaire • Demographic questions • Skill • How difficult do you find it to get high grades in your courses here at Cornell, on average? • How difficult do you find it to finish your course work here at Cornell, on average? • Motivation • How important is it to you to do well and achieve academically?

44. Experiment 2 • Design • Goal priming (achievement, control) • Timing of attitude measure (immediate, delay) • Skill (high, low)

45. Experiment 2 • Hypothesis • Those in the goal condition should show more positive implicit attitudes toward the goal prime • Only for high skill • The effect should not weaken over time

46. Experiment 2 • Results • Implicit positivity scores • Significant interaction between goal, timing, and skill, F(1,83) = 5.23, p = .025 • Low skill, interaction of goal x timing, ns, p>.25 • High skill, F(1,45) = 4.11, p < .05

47. Implicit positivity for high skill as a function of goal priming and timing (Ferguson, under review)

48. Implicit positivity for high skill as a function of goal priming and timing (Ferguson, under review)

49. Experiment 2 • Conclusions • Evaluative readiness emerged for highly skilled, even though goal was nonconsciously activated and stimuli were subliminal • Effect was stronger after delay, indicating a motivational construct • But! No effects on conscious motivation • (e.g., Aarts, Gollwitzer, & Hassin, 2004)

50. Experiment 3 • Remaining questions • Goals have been activated implicitly, but because the goal primes were consciously perceived, may leave some room for conscious rumination • Subliminal goal priming task • Measured implicit attitudes toward means for the goal, but tested whether skill was correlated with beliefs about means