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Decoupling implicit measures of pleasant and unpleasant social attitudes
Alex S Cohen1, Melissa R Beck, Laura A Brown
1Louisiana State University, Department of Psychology, Baton Rouge, 70803, United States. acohen@lsu.edu
Abstract:
Social attitudes are integral to understanding a wide range of pathological states. The present study adapted the Implicit Association Test, a widely used implicit measure of attitudes, for understanding social attitudes and behavior. In a first study, data from a traditional "Bipolar" IAT and our modified "Unipolar" pleasant and unpleasant IATs were compared in their associations with explicit measures of social attitudes and behavior. In a second study, we examined the relationship between implicit measures of social attitudes and social behavior during a laboratory procedure. Collectively, the present data support the uncoupling of pleasant and unpleasant valences when using implicit measures to understand social attitudes.
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