Review of Handbook of implicit social cognition: Measurement, theory, and applications.

Abstract

Handbook of Implicit Social Cognition: Measurement, Theory, and Applications, by Bertram Gawronski & Keith B. Payne (Eds.). New York: The Guilford Press, 2010, 626 Pages (ISBN 978-1-60623-673-4, US $85.00 Hardcover) As noted in the first paragraph of this handbook, more than 14,000 scientific articles related to implicit social cognition have been published, and more than half of those have appeared within the last 10 years. As such, the comprehensive overview of theoretical models, empirical findings, and practical applications of research in implicit social cognition provided within this book is timely and warranted. The editors were successful in clearly outlining that implicit social cognition theory and measurement has helped explain not only universal human behaviour such as decision-making, emotional experience, and interpersonal relationships, but has widespread appeal for research related to clinical psychology, consumer behaviour, racism, morality, law, selfesteem, and politics, to name a few. A primary strength of this volume is the way in which seemingly divergent areas of research have been organized into five distinct sections, each of which builds upon the previous sections to provide a comprehensive understanding of implicit social cognition: (1) the basic information needed to understand implicit social cognition research, (2) detailed descriptions of relevant methods and procedures, (3) cross-cutting perspectives, (4) domain-specific perspectives, and (5) practical applications. In the first section, and indeed, throughout the book, divergent views related to the definition of complex concepts such as implicit, explicit, automatic, controlled, and unconscious are outlined. Interesting attempts at unifying distinct dual-systems models provide exciting conceptualisations for future research. Contemporary theories are often grounded in historical and philosophical accounts of understanding human behaviour. The section ends with a description of how theories of implicit social cognition map onto findings from social neuroscience, which offers a unique perspective on biological bases of human functioning. Although these chapters provide a balanced and comprehensive introduction to the basics of implicit social cognition research, their complexity makes them appropriate for graduate students and academics with some previous knowledge of such processes. The second section of the book provides an important review of frequently used measurement tools in the area of implicit social cognition. Chapters 6 and 7 provide excellent, fine-grained analyses of what processes are measured by sequential priming, implicit association, and related tasks, including empirical support for their use and careful assessment of their limitations. Additionally, they provide detailed guides for the implementation of such tasks in future research, including helpful information related to programming, choice of stimuli, and potential roadblocks and pitfalls. The following chapter, which focuses on pencil-and-paper measures of implicit processes, features excellent sections on predictive validity and how to develop such tasks, but could benefit from greater coverage of evidence for reliability and other types of validity. Finally, chapters devoted to mathematical modelling techniques and criteria for assessing the nature and quality of implicit measures convey useful and exciting opportunities for refining both tasks and data interpretation for implicit social cognition research. Section three includes chapters reviewing the cross-cutting perspectives of consciousness, influences on the development, change, and measurement of mental representations, implicit social cognition across the life span, prediction of behaviour, judgment and decision-making, implicit-explicit discrepancies, and goal pursuit. An examination of the formation, change, and contextualization of mental representations highlights the importance of looking at all variables that may affect performance on indirect measures. …