Explicit and implicit speaker evaluations and their differential attitudinal determinants

Abstract

Previous speaker evaluation studies have traditionally assessed the influence of attitudes toward languages with explicit self-report measures. Social-cognitive theories positing a differential influence of explicit and implicit attitudes on controlled versus automatic evaluative responses have not been addressed in this domain thus far. In addition to separating attitudes toward languages from attitudes toward nationality, the aim of this study was to test whether explicit and implicit speaker evaluations refer to distinct concepts. We expected that explicit attitudes would be stronger predictors of deliberate speaker evaluations than implicit attitudes would. By contrast, we expected that automatic evaluations examined with an evaluative priming task would primarily reflect implicit attitudes. Results showed that explicit speaker evaluations were influenced by explicit attitudes toward nationality, whereas implicit evaluations were mainly predicted by implicit attitudes toward nationality. The crucial role of speaker's nationality in speaker evaluation processes is further discussed within the framework of implicit group processes.