Unconscious mental content in implicit evaluation: Evidence from misprediction.

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• A dominant view in social psychology posits that implicit evaluations are unconscious.
• Recent findings suggest people can predict their implicit judgments, questioning this unconscious view.
• However, prior studies used familiar targets and correlated implicit-explicit measures, allowing non-introspective predictions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether predictive accuracy of implicit evaluations reflects genuine introspective access.
• To test the unconscious view of implicit evaluations under conditions minimizing non-introspective prediction routes.

Main Methods:

• Eight experiments (N=6,794) used novel targets to prevent background knowledge influence.
• Implicit and explicit evaluations were shifted in opposite directions.
• Measures included the Implicit Association Test and evaluative priming, across different learning paradigms and designs.

Main Results:

• Predictive accuracy for implicit evaluations was low to nonexistent.
• Participants often predicted shifts in the opposite direction of actual changes.
• Findings held across various experimental conditions, including novel targets and opposing evaluation shifts.

Conclusions:

• The ability to predict implicit evaluations does not necessarily reflect introspective access.
• Implicit evaluations may represent mental content largely inaccessible to conscious awareness.
• Challenges the notion that implicit judgments are readily predictable via conscious insight.