Relative effects of implicit and explicit attitudes on behavior: A meta-analytic review and test of key moderators

The present study investigated the unique effects of implicit and explicit attitude forms on behavior and, critically, effects of salient conditions and contextual moderators expected to determine the relative size of each form on behavior in a meta-analytic synthesis review. Specifically, we tested the effects of salient methodological (e.g., methodology used to infer implicit attitude, measure of behavior characteristics, presentation order), conceptual (e.g., conceptualization of explicit attitude, degree of conscious control, social desirability concerns, target behavior), and sample-related (e.g., age) moderators on the relative effects of each form of attitude on behavior. We tested a model specifying unique effects of each form of attitude on behavior using multilevel meta-analytic structural equation modeling in studies (k = 1,108) identified in a systematic literature search. Moderator effects were tested by estimating the model across groups of studies at each level of the moderator. Consistent with prior research, we found unique bias-corrected averaged effects of both forms of attitude when regressed simultaneously on behavior, with a larger effect size for explicit attitudes. Moderator analyses revealed relatively few systematic differences in the effect of each form of attitude on behavior across moderator levels, although we observed larger explicit attitude effects in studies reporting larger correlations between implicit and explicit attitudes. Findings indicate nonzero small-sized unique effects of each form of attitude on behavior across contexts and samples, albeit with high residual heterogeneity after accounting for moderators signaling the need for large-sample primary research systematically testing the effects of further salient moderators. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).