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10 - Predicting Biased Voting Behavior with Implicit Attitude Measures: Results from a Voting Experiment and the 2008 Presidential Election

from Section II - Do Measures of Implicit Bias Predict Cognition and Behavior?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2024

By
Cecilia Hyunjung Mo  and
Tabitha Bonilla
Edited by
Jon A. Krosnick ,
Tobias H. Stark  and
Amanda L. Scott
Jon A. Krosnick
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Tobias H. Stark
Affiliation:
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Amanda L. Scott
Affiliation:
The Strategy Team, Columbus, Ohio
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Summary

Researchers in cognitive psychology have proposed that there are two distinct cognitive systems or dual processes underlying reasoning: automatic (implicit) processing and effortful (explicit) processing. Multiple measures have since been developed to capture implicit attitudes. However, do these new measures truly capture implicit attitudes? And can these implicit measures be used interchangeably? To answer this question, we investigated the differences between two of the most popular implicit attitudes measures used in the study of political behavior, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP). We examined data from an original survey experiment investigating gender attitudes and a nationally representative survey that measured racial attitudes. We found that it is important to consider implicit measures alongside explicit measures, as they are not redundant measures. However, when implicit attitudes are measured with the IAT, our inferences are more consistent with predictions of dual process accounts. Moreover, the IAT picks up out-group bias in a way that the AMP does not. The two studies point to the presence of significant differences between different types of implicit measures, and a need to reconsider how implicit attitudes are measured.

Keywords

Implicit attitudesexplicit attitudesdual process theories of the mindprejudiceImplicit Attitude TestAffect Misattribution Procedure
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Implicit Bias and Racism , pp. 279 - 304
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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