Dissociations between implicit and explicit attitudes toward phobic stimuli

Abstract

The present study explored the presence of complaint-specific implicit associations in the domain of spider fear. Participants' implicit negative associations with spider cues were measured in highly fearful (n = 18) and explicitly nonfearful individuals (n = 19). To increase the reliability of the present study, two indices of implicit associations were used: a modified implicit association test (IAT), and an affective Simon paradigm (ASP). To test the stability of the IAT and the ASP, participants were tested twice. At the explicit level the attitude to spider cues was far more negative for high fear participants than for no fear participants. In contrast, high and low fear participants displayed very similar negative associations with spiders at the implicit level. Indicating their resistance to practice effects the ASP and IAT revealed similar results on both occasions. The dual attitude in low fear individuals suggests that the nonfearful individual is the one who can suppress the automatic negative spider stereotype, whereas the phobic individual is the one who does not attempt or is not able to control the negative associations with spider cues.