Changing Implicit and Explicit Prejudice

Abstract

Although overt prejudice has declined in many societies over the past decades, new advancements in intergroup relations research have uncovered various kinds of subtle biases that continue to prevail despite increases in egalitarian values. Understanding the processes that may produce inconsistencies between spontaneous affective responses and self-reported explicit evaluations can provide deeper insights into conceptually different forms of prejudice, including both overt and subtle variants. In the present article, research on prejudice reduction is reviewed from the perspective of the associative-propositional evaluation (APE) model, which considers evaluations through the processes of associative activation and propositional validation. The APE model’s potential for integrating different conceptualizations of overt and subtle prejudice and the application of the model to prejudice reduction are discussed.