Does Spontaneous Favorability to Power (vs. Universalism) Values Predict Spontaneous Prejudice and Discrimination?

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Attitude Measurement
• Value Theory

Background:

• Human values significantly influence attitudes and behaviors.
• Implicit measures capture automatic associations, offering insights beyond conscious awareness.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if implicit favorability toward power values predicts spontaneous prejudice and discrimination.
• To compare the predictive power of implicit versus explicit value measures.

Main Methods:

• Five studies utilized implicit and explicit measures of value favorability (power vs. universalism, achievement vs. benevolence).
• Methods included correlational analyses, conditioning paradigms, and decision bias tasks assessing prejudice and discrimination.

Main Results:

• Spontaneous positivity toward power values correlated with spontaneous negativity toward ethnic minorities.
• Implicit favorability toward power values predicted gender bias in a decision task.
• Explicit value measures did not show similar predictive power.

Conclusions:

• Implicit assessment of evaluative responses to human values is crucial for understanding value-attitude-behavior relations.
• Implicit measures provide unique insights into the prediction of prejudice and discrimination.