Implicit Evaluations Research Articles

„Ekomobil není ekologický telefon” – Neue tschechische Komposita als Gegenstand von Bewertungen1

Summary During the last decades an ever growing number of a certain type of compounds can be distinguished within the Czech word-formation process. Compounds based on international constituents (as bio-, eko-, agro-, video- …) are meanwhile so numerous, that they cannot be considered any more as a secondary way of word-formation. Assuming a relationship between language use and language evaluation, the present paper discusses the evaluation of the above mentioned compounds and how they are valued both by linguists and laymen. Based on texts that reflect certain linguistic values or linguistics schools, can be delineated different value types and evaluating instruments. Linguists typically prefer implicit evaluation based on utility-oriented values whereas laymen favor explicit language items to express absolute (puristic) values.

Nonverbal deficits in explicit and implicit memory of Parkinson's disease patients.

This study examined verbal and nonverbal aspects of explicit and implicit memory in a sample of 19 Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and 21 control subjects. For implicit memory evaluation, we used a Mirror Reading (MR) task employing verbal material as well as a nonverbal Serial Reaction Time (SRT) task. For explicit memory measurement we applied a word pairs task (verbal) and pairs of a Japanese ideograms task (nonverbal). The PD patients displayed impairments in the nonverbal tasks only, namely, in the SRT task and the pairs of Japanese ideograms task. No correlation between Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) scores and the results of tasks in which PD patients displayed deficits (SRT and pairs of Japanese ideograms) were discovered. Interestingly, such a correlation was found in the case of MR and words pairs tasks, which did not distinguish PD patients from control group.

Evaluating Faces on Trustworthiness

People routinely make various trait judgments from facial appearance, and such judgments affect important social outcomes. These judgments are highly correlated with each other, reflecting the fact that valence evaluation permeates trait judgments from faces. Trustworthiness judgments best approximate this evaluation, consistent with evidence about the involvement of the amygdala in the implicit evaluation of face trustworthiness. Based on computer modeling and behavioral experiments, I argue that face evaluation is an extension of functionally adaptive systems for understanding the communicative meaning of emotional expressions. Specifically, in the absence of diagnostic emotional cues, trustworthiness judgments are an attempt to infer behavioral intentions signaling approach/avoidance behaviors. Correspondingly, these judgments are derived from facial features that resemble emotional expressions signaling such behaviors: happiness and anger for the positive and negative ends of the trustworthiness continuum, respectively. The emotion overgeneralization hypothesis can explain highly efficient but not necessarily accurate trait judgments from faces, a pattern that appears puzzling from an evolutionary point of view and also generates novel predictions about brain responses to faces. Specifically, this hypothesis predicts a nonlinear response in the amygdala to face trustworthiness, confirmed in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, and dissociations between processing of facial identity and face evaluation, confirmed in studies with developmental prosopagnosics. I conclude with some methodological implications for the study of face evaluation, focusing on the advantages of formally modeling representation of faces on social dimensions.

Implicit Attitude Generalization Occurs Immediately; Explicit Attitude Generalization Takes Time

People are able to explicitly resist using knowledge about one person to evaluate another person from the same group. After learning about positive and negative behaviors performed by one individual from each of two different groups, participants were introduced briefly to new individuals from the groups. Implicit evaluations of the original individuals readily generalized to the new individuals; explicitly, participants resisted such generalization. Days later, both implicit and explicit evaluations of the original individuals generalized to the new individuals. The results suggest that associative links (e.g., shared group membership) are sufficient for implicit attitude generalization, but deliberative logic (e.g., individual group members are not necessarily the same) can reduce explicit generalization by association. When knowledge distinguishing who did what is unavailable, such as after forgetting, associative knowledge provides the basis of explicit evaluation. We conclude that a simple association linking one individual to another can produce implicit attitude generalization immediately and explicit attitude generalization eventually.

Reliability and validity of the Single‐Target IAT (ST‐IAT): assessing automatic affect towards multiple attitude objects

AbstractIn contrast to the original Implicit Association Test (IAT), the Single‐Target Implicit Association Test (ST‐IAT) measures the evaluation of a target object without the need to simultaneously evaluate a counter‐category. The present research investigates (a) whether position within a series of several ST‐IATs affects reliability and validity, and (b) whether the ST‐IAT exhibits adequate construct validity if the target objects are closely interrelated. We address these questions by taking five interrelated yet distinct political parties in Germany as an exemplary domain. The ST‐IAT reliably and validly assessed attitudes towards political parties (Study 1). Serial position effects did not affect the results. The ST‐IATs mostly captured a specific party evaluation and exhibited discriminant validity. At the same time, discriminant validity was limited among parties within one wing of the political left–right spectrum that underlies implicit and explicit party evaluations (Study 2). If used with caution, the ST‐IAT can be a valuable supplement to implicit measures in the case of multiple single‐target assessments. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Understanding collaborative filtering parameters for personalized recommendations in e-commerce

Collaborative Filtering (CF) is a popular method for personalizing product recommendations for e-Commerce and customer relationship management (CRM). CF utilizes the explicit or implicit product evaluation ratings of customers to develop personalized recommendations. However, there has been no in-depth investigation of the parameters of CF in relation to the number of ratings on the part of an individual customer and the total number of ratings for an item. We empirically investigated the relationships between these two parameters and CF performance, using two publicly available data sets, EachMovie and MovieLens. We conducted three experiments. The first two investigated the relationship between a particular customer's number of ratings and CF recommendation performance. The third experiment evaluated the relationship between the total number of ratings for a particular item and CF recommendation performance. We found that there are ratings thresholds below which recommendation performance increases monotonically, i.e., when the numbers of customer and item ratings are below threshold levels, CF recommendation performance is affected. In addition, once rating numbers surpass threshold levels, the value of each rating decreases. These results may facilitate operational decisions when applying CF in practice.

Implicit Trustworthiness Decisions: Automatic Coding of Face Properties in the Human Amygdala

Deciding whether an unfamiliar person is trustworthy is one of the most important decisions in social environments. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to show that the amygdala is involved in implicit evaluations of trustworthiness of faces, consistent with prior findings. The amygdala response increased as perceived trustworthiness decreased in a task that did not demand person evaluation. More importantly, we tested whether this response is due to an individual's idiosyncratic perception or to face properties that are perceived as untrustworthy across individuals. The amygdala response was better predicted by consensus ratings of trustworthiness than by an individual's own judgments. Individual judgments accounted for little residual variance in the amygdala after controlling for the shared variance with consensus ratings. These findings suggest that the amygdala automatically categorizes faces according to face properties commonly perceived to signal untrustworthiness.

Explicit and Implicit Evaluation of Physician Adherence to Hypertension Guidelines

This study evaluated physician adherence to the Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure (JNC 7) hypertension guidelines in 6 community-based clinics. Explicit review of retrospective medical record data for patients with uncontrolled hypertension measured guideline adherence using 22 criteria. Mean overall guideline adherence was 53.5% and did not improve significantly over time. Random-effects models demonstrated significant associations between guideline adherence and various demographic and medical predictors, including age, minority status, comorbid conditions, and number of medications. A subsequent implicit review evaluated the degree to which nonadherence was justifiable and identified factors that might have affected adherence. Nonadherence was rated as justifiable for only 6.6% of the failed explicit criteria. In general, adherence to the JNC 7 guidelines was modest even when barriers that might have affected adherence were taken into consideration.

A Multitrait-Multimethod Validation of the Implicit Association Test

Recent theoretical and methodological innovations suggest a distinction between implicit and explicit evaluations. We applied Campbell and Fiske's (1959) classic multitrait-multimethod design precepts to test the construct validity of implicit attitudes as measured by the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Participants (N = 287) were measured on both self-report and IAT for up to seven attitude domains. Through a sequence of latent-variable structural models, systematic method variance was distinguished from attitude variance, and a correlated two-factors-per-attitude model (implicit and explicit factors) was superior to a single-factor-per-attitude specification. That is, despite sometimes strong relations between implicit and explicit attitude factors, collapsing their indicators into a single attitude factor resulted in relatively inferior model fit. We conclude that these implicit and explicit measures assess related but distinct attitude constructs. This provides a basis for, but does not distinguish between, dual-process and dual-representation theories that account for the distinctions between constructs.

Automatic attention does not equal automatic fear: Preferential attention without implicit valence.

Theories of nonassociative fear acquisition hold that humans have an innate predisposition for some fears, such as fear of snakes and spiders. This predisposition may be mediated by an evolved fear module (Ohman & Mineka, 2001) that responds to basic perceptual features of threat stimuli by directing attention preferentially and generating an automatic fear response. Visual search and affective priming tasks were used to examine attentional processing and implicit evaluation of snake and spider pictures in participants with different explicit attitudes; controls (n = 25) and snake and spider experts (n = 23). Attentional processing and explicit evaluation were found to diverge; snakes and spiders were preferentially attended to by all participants; however, they were negative only for controls. Implicit evaluations of dangerous and nondangerous snakes and spiders, which have similar perceptual features, differed for expert participants, but not for controls. The authors suggest that although snakes and spiders are preferentially attended to, negative evaluations are not automatically elicited during this processing.

Stereotyping and evaluation in implicit race bias: Evidence for independent constructs and unique effects on behavior.

Implicit stereotyping and prejudice often appear as a single process in behavior, yet functional neuroanatomy suggests that they arise from fundamentally distinct substrates associated with semantic versus affective memory systems. On the basis of this research, the authors propose that implicit stereotyping reflects cognitive processes and should predict instrumental behaviors such as judgments and impression formation, whereas implicit evaluation reflects affective processes and should predict consummatory behaviors, such as interpersonal preferences and social distance. Study 1 showed the independence of participants' levels of implicit stereotyping and evaluation. Studies 2 and 3 showed the unique effects of implicit stereotyping and evaluation on self-reported and behavioral responses to African Americans using double-dissociation designs. Implications for construct validity, theory development, and research design are discussed.

A metacognitive approach to "implicit" and "explicit" evaluations: Comment on Gawronski and Bodenhausen (2006).

A metacognitive model (MCM) is presented to describe how automatic (implicit) and deliberative (explicit) measures of attitudes respond to change attempts. The model assumes that contemporary implicit measures tap quick evaluative associations, whereas explicit measures also consider the perceived validity of these associations (and other factors). Change in explicit measures is greater than implicit measures when new evaluative associations are formed and old associations are rejected. Implicit measure change is greater than explicit when newly formed evaluative associations are rejected. When implicit and explicit evaluations conflict, implicit ambivalence can occur. The authors relate the MCM to the associative-propositional evaluation model and explain how the MCM builds on the attitude strength assumptions of the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion.

I like it, because I like myself: Associative self-anchoring and post-decisional change of implicit evaluations

Research in the cognitive dissonance tradition has shown that choosing between two equally attractive alternatives leads to more favorable evaluations of chosen as compared to rejected alternatives (spreading-of-alternatives effect). The present research tested associative self-anchoring as an alternative mechanism for post-decisional changes of implicit evaluations. Specifically, we argue that choosing an object results in the creation of an association between the chosen object and the self. By virtue of this association, implicit evaluations of the self tend to transfer to the chosen object, such that implicit evaluations of the chosen object depend on implicit evaluations of the self. Importantly, this mechanism can lead to ownership-related changes in implicit evaluations even in the absence of cognitive dissonance. Results from four experiments provide converging evidence for these assumptions. Implications for a variety of phenomena are discussed, including cognitive dissonance, the mere ownership effect, the endowment effect, and ingroup favoritism.

How to Bite Your Tongue Without Blowing Your Top: Implicit Evaluation of Emotion Regulation Predicts Affective Responding to Anger Provocation

People frequently have to control their emotions to function in life. However, mounting evidence suggests that deliberate emotion regulation often is costly. This presents a dilemma: Is it better to let emotions go or to pay the price of exerting costly control? In two studies, the authors explore whether emotion regulatory processes associated with implicit positive evaluation of emotion regulation might provide the benefits of successful emotion regulation without the costs. In Study 1, the authors introduce a measure of implicit evaluation of emotion regulation (ER-IAT). Study 2 examined whether this measure is associated with actual emotional responses to an anger provocation. It was found that greater ER-IAT scores were associated with lesser anger experience, fewer negative thoughts, lessened self-reported effortful emotion regulation, and an adaptive pattern of cardiovascular responding. These findings suggest that implicit positive evaluation of emotion regulation is associated with successful, automatic, and physiologically adaptive down-regulation of anger.

A hybrid system of abductive tactical decision making

One important aspect of intelligent decision making is to infer a best explanation for a set of observations, a process resembling abduction. In this paper, we report a hybrid system to simulate this process. Specifically, the system combines a symbolic Soar component for deliberate explanation generation and a connectionist UEcho component for implicit explanation evaluation. To evaluate the system, we trained the system to perform a tactical decision making task based on expert data in one scenario, and tested it on two novel scenarios. The implications of such hybrid systems are discussed.

Reducing Automatically Activated Racial Prejudice Through Implicit Evaluative Conditioning

The authors report a set of experiments that use an implicit evaluative conditioning procedure to reduce automatically activated racial prejudice in White participants in a short period and with relatively few trials. Experiment 1 demonstrated that participants were unaware of the repeated conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus (CS-US) pairings of Black-good and White-bad. In Experiment 2, the procedure was found to be effective in reducing prejudice as indicated by an evaluative priming measure of automatically activated racial attitudes. In Experiment 3, this reduction in prejudice was found to persist throughout a 2-day separation between the conditioning procedure and the administration of the dependent measure. The implications of the present findings for the persistence of automatically activated racial prejudice are discussed.

How to Portray Men and Women in Advertisements? Explicit and Implicit Evaluations of Ads Depicting Different Gender Roles

The purpose of the current study was to gain more insight in the evaluation of advertisements containing different gender role portrayals (stereotypical/a-stereotypical) by examining explicit and implicit processes of ad evaluation. The results of two experiments showed an explicit preference for ads containing a-stereotypical images. Implicitly, we found a preference for 'warm' ads irrespective of the degree of gender stereotypicality of the ad. These findings suggest that complex stimuli such as ads may inhibit implicit gender stereotype activation. At an implicit level, warmth seems a better predictor of ad evaluation.

Greater Impairment in Negative Emotion Evaluation Ability in Patients with Paranoid Schizophrenia

To explore whether or not patients with schizophrenia display a more profound impairment of negative emotion processing, we assessed the implicit evaluation of positive and negative emotional stimuli. Twenty patients with schizophrenia (9 paranoid, 11 non-paranoid) and 22 normal controls were instructed to classify emotional pictures according to the intrinsic valence if the pictures were black and white. If the stimuli were color-filtered, participants were instructed to press the positive/negative response key according to the extrinsic valence (assigned valence of color). The error rates of the color-filtered stimuli were used as dependent measures. Normal controls made more errors on trials of the positive pictures when the correct response was the negative response key than when the correct response was the positive response key. The reverse was true on trials of the negative pictures. Patients with schizophrenia, especially paranoid schizophrenia, committed more errors in trials of the positive pictures when the correct response key was the negative response key. However, the reverse was not true on trials of the negative pictures. These findings suggest that patients with paranoid schizophrenia might suffer from an impaired ability to evaluate negative emotions and have a loosening of association within their negative emotional networks.

Decoding the implicit association test: Implications for criterion prediction

The implicit association test (IAT) is believed to measure implicit evaluations by assessing reaction times on two cognitive tasks, often termed “compatible” and “incompatible” tasks. A common rationale for studying the IAT is that it might improve our prediction and understanding of meaningful psychological criteria. To date, however, no clear psychometric theory has been advanced for this measure. We examine the theory, methods and analytic strategies surrounding the IAT in the context of criterion prediction to determine measurement and causal models a researcher embraces (knowingly or unknowingly) by using the test. Our analyses reveal that the IAT revolves around interpretation of two distinct relative constructs, one at the conceptual level and one at the observed level. We show that interest in relative implicit evaluations at the conceptual level imposes a causal model that is restrictive in form. We then examine measurement models of the IAT and show how computing a difference score at the observed level may lack empirical justification. These issues are highlighted in a study replicating an effect established in the literature (Study 1). We then introduce a new variant of the IAT and use it to evaluate the reasonableness of traditional IAT methods (Study 2).

Processus émotionnel dans la schizophrénie : étude de la composante d’évaluation

Resume Le premier objectif de cette etude etait de tester l’hypothese de polarite, c’est-a-dire l’hypothese selon laquelle l’evaluation des evenements positifs vs negatifs implique des mecanismes emotionnels differents. Le second objectif etait d’eclaircir un paradoxe apparent dans la litterature sur la schizophrenie : la tendance des patients schizophrenes a sous-evaluer le niveau de desagrement des stimuli negatifs suggere un trouble dans l’evaluation des evenements negatifs, alors que le fait que l’anhedonie constitue un trait clinique essentiel de la schizophrenie suggere au contraire la presence d’un trouble touchant principalement l’evaluation des evenements positifs. Les stimuli utilises dans notre etude etaient des photographies emotionnellement positives ou negatives, a caractere social ou non. Sur chaque photographie, deux bordures, pouvant etre soit identiques soit differentes, ont ete ajoutees. Dans une premiere experience, dite « implicite », il etait demande a des patients schizophrenes et a leurs temoins de decider si les bordures superieure et inferieure des photographies etaient identiques ou differentes. Dans une seconde experience, dite « explicite », il leur etait demande de juger si les photographies etaient agreables ou desagreables. Deux resultats obtenus sont en faveur de l’hypothese de polarite : 1) dans la condition d’evaluation implicite, l’effet du facteur polarite differait entre les patients et leurs temoins ; 2) dans la condition d’evaluation explicite, les patterns de reponse des patients et de leurs temoins differaient selon la polarite des stimuli non sociaux. De plus, les resultats ont mis en evidence un deficit dans le jugement hedonique de photographies negatives sociales et de photographies positives non sociales chez les patients schizophrenes, suggerant ainsi que le paradoxe apparent decrit ci-dessus s’eclaircit des lors que la composante sociale des stimuli est consideree. Les resultats obtenus suggerent que la polarite et la composante sociale des evenements evalues par les patients schizophrenes sont des parametres a considerer dans les prochaines etudes concernant les troubles affectifs dans la schizophrenie.