The Role of Self-Involvement in Shifting IAT Effects
Abstract
Explicit measures can be affected by self-involvement in processing of a message (Johnson & Eagly, 1989). Here, we show that self-involvement in a counter-stereotypical message also influences implicit measures such as the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). In our study, racial attitudes changed only after reading a counter-stereotypical scenario in which participants were asked to imagine themselves as victims of an assault as opposed to simply imagine an assault to a person. This shift did not depend on evaluative instructions and it was transient as it was no longer present after 1 week. These results suggest that the self-involvement might be an important factor in shifting implicit measures.
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