Gaining control over responses to implicit attitude tests: Implementation intentions engender fast responses on attitude‐incongruent trials

Abstract

The present research investigated whether forming implementation intentions could promote fast responses to attitude-incongruent associations (e.g., woman-manager) and thereby modify scores on popular implicit measures of attitude. Expt 1 used the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure associations between gender and science versus liberal arts. Planning to associate women with science engendered fast responses to this category-attribute pairing and rendered summary scores more neutral compared to standard IAT instructions. Expt 2 demonstrated that forming egalitarian goal intentions is not sufficient to produce these effects. Expt 3 extended these findings to a different measure of implicit attitude (the Go/No-Go Association Task) and a different stereotypical association (Muslims-terrorism). In Expt 4, managers who planned to associate women with superordinate positions showed more neutral IAT scores relative to non-planners and effects were maintained 3 weeks later. In sum, implementation intentions enable people to gain control over implicit attitude responses.