Revisiting the Obama Effect: Exposure to Obama reduces implicit prejudice

The present research experimentally evaluated whether exposure to Barack Obama, a positive counter-stereotypic exemplar, can result in a decrease in implicit anti-Black prejudice among non-Black participants. In order to undo any existing influence of exposure to Obama, we first exposed some participants to negative Black exemplars. Participants were assigned to one of three conditions where they were exposed subtly to negative Black exemplars, to negative Black exemplars and then Obama, or to neutral X's (i.e., control). Participants who were only primed with negative Black exemplars showed more implicit negativity toward Black people compared to the control group. Participants exposed to the same negative Black exemplars and then Obama showed a decrease in implicit racial bias levels compared to those in the negative exemplar only condition, providing experimental evidence that exposure to Obama can decrease implicit racial bias levels. These findings indicate that even subtle exposure to a positive, counter-stereotypic exemplar can reduce implicit prejudice.     

Traffic safety climate attitudes of road users in Germany

This paper validates traffic safety climate attitudes based on a representative sample of road users of all travel modes. We use the German version of the Traffic Climate Scale (TCS) which was applied in a large-scale road safety survey in 2010. A total of 1680 people were surveyed. The sample is representative for socio-demographic characteristics and travel mode choice in Germany. Factor analysis reveals a three-factor structure of traffic safety climate with the factor ‘External affective demands’ describing emotional engagement in traffic, the factor ‘Internal requirements’ representing individual skills and abilities to successfully participate in traffic, and the factor ‘Functionality’ describing requirements for a functional traffic system. The less emotionally demanding and the more functional traffic is perceived to be, the safer people feel in traffic. External affective demands are consistently related to the perception of others’ driving/riding style but not to one’s own, whereas internal requirements are consistently related to one’s own driving/riding style but not to the perception of others. There is no relation between traffic safety climate and accidents or near accidents. Contrary to our expectations, a positive traffic safety climate is associated with more secondary tasks while driving and traffic violations. Behavioural control beliefs may mediate the traffic climate–traffic behaviour relationship. The results are discussed with reference to attitude research and the theory of planned behaviour in particular.     

CAN SCIENCE AND RELIGION RESPOND TO CLIMATE CHANGE?

With the challenge of communicating climate science in the United States and making progress in international negotiations on climate change there is a need for other approaches. The moral issues of ecological degradation and climate justice need to be integrated into social consciousness, political legislation, and climate treaties. Both science and religion can contribute to this integration with differentiated language but shared purpose. Recognizing the limits of both science and religion is critical to finding a way forward for addressing the critical challenges of climate change. How we value nature and human–Earth relations is crucial to this. We need a broader environmental ethics in dialogue with the science of climate change.     

A good thing isn’t always a good thing: Dispositional attitudes predict non-normative judgments

A common belief in social sciences is that people like or dislike stimuli based on the properties possessed by those stimuli. Therefore, stimuli with many (few) positives should be universally liked (disliked). However, differences in opinion are common, and one source of disagreement may be personality. This research demonstrates that dispositional attitudes (an individual difference in the tendency to like/dislike stimuli), are associated with qualitative attitude differences (i.e., liking rather than disliking) for stimuli across important domains such as health, business, entertainment, and politics. Qualitative attitude differences frequently predict interpersonal conflict and diametrically opposed behavioral outcomes (e.g., voting for or against a candidate). Thus, these results have implications for understanding seemingly intractable differences found in nearly all social science fields.     

Visual working memory and threat monitoring: Spider fearfuls show disorder-specific change detection

Previous studies of biased information processing in anxiety addressed biases of attention and memory, but little is known about the processes taking place between them: visual working memory (VWM) and monitoring of threat. We investigated these processes with a change detection paradigm. In Experiment 1, spider fearfuls (SF) and non-anxious controls (NAC) judged two subsequently presented displays as same or different. The displays consisted of several pictures, one of which could depict a spider. In Experiment 2, SF and NAC, both without snake fear, were tested with displays including either a spider or a snake image to determine the material-specificity of biased VWM. Both groups showed increased change detection for threat images. This effect was significantly stronger in SF, for spider images only, indicating a threat-specific VWM bias. Thus, contrary to the assumptions made by most cognitive models of anxiety, an explicit memory bias was found.     

On the determinants of implicit evaluations: When the present weighs more than the past

It is often assumed that implicit evaluations are influenced by early childhood experiences, whereas explicit evaluations reflect recent experiences. However, previous findings supporting this assumption remain ambiguous as to whether the differential effects of early versus recent experiences are driven by their temporal distance or their affective versus cognitive nature. Controlling for affectivity by using a predominantly affective attitude object (i.e., religion), the present study found that both implicit and explicit evaluations were related to recent, but not early, experiences. This pattern consistently emerged for self-reported experiences as well as independent reports from parents. Moreover, the relation of recent experiences to one type of evaluation remained significant after controlling for the respective other type of evaluation, suggesting that recent experiences influenced implicit and explicit evaluations independently. Implications for attitudinal dissociations and processes of attitude change are discussed.     

Malleability of attitudes or malleability of the IAT?

In the current set of experiments, we establish, and explore the consequences of, the imprecision that characterizes the attribute response labels typically employed in the Implicit Association Test (IAT). In Experiment 1, we demonstrate the malleability of the IAT, as conventionally implemented. IAT scores are shown to be influenced by perspective mindsets induced by an unrelated preceding task. Then, we explore how the malleability of the IAT can lead to the inference that attitude change has occurred even when there is very good reason to believe it has not (Experiment 2), and conversely, how it can obscure the detection of attitude change when such change is indeed likely to have occurred (Experiment 3). We provide conceptual explanations for these discrepancies and suggest methodological improvements to enhance the specificity of IAT measures.     

Perceiving stability as a means to attitude certainty: The role of implicit theories of attitudes

This research introduces the concept of implicit theories of attitude stability. Across three studies, individuals are shown to vary both naturally and situationally in their lay theories about the stability of attitudes. Furthermore, these general theories are shown to impact people's certainty in their specific attitudes by shaping their perceptions of the stability of the attitude under consideration. By affecting attitude certainty, implicit theories of attitude stability also influence the extent to which people rely on their attitude when committing to future attitude-relevant behavior. Moreover, following exposure to a persuasive attack, implicit theories are shown to interact with situational perceptions of attitude stability to determine attitude certainty. Collectively, these findings suggest that implicit theories of attitude stability have an important influence on people's attitude certainty, subsequent behavioral intentions, and resistance to persuasive messages. Future directions concerning the potential impact of these theories for other attitudinal phenomena are discussed.     

Morality and political orientations: An analysis of their relationship

Groups are social constructions with differences. People spontaneously attempt to explain differences between groups. Stereotypes often play this explanatory role. Specifically, group members tend to attribute different essences to social categories. Given widespread ethnocentrism, it is not surprising that individuals reserve “the human essence” for their ingroup, while other groups are attributed a lesser humanity. This phenomenon is called infra‐humanisation and happens outside people's awareness. Secondary emotions (e.g., love, hope, contempt, resentment) are considered uniquely human emotions in contrast to primary emotions (e.g., joy, surprise, fear, anger) that are shared with animals. The research programme summarised in this chapter demonstrates through various paradigms that members of groups not only attribute more secondary emotions to their ingroup than to outgroups, but are also reluctant to associate these emotions with outgroups. Moreover, people behave less cooperatively with an outgroup member who expresses himself with secondary emotions than with an ingroup member who uses the same terms. Interestingly, infra‐humanisation occurs for both high‐ and low‐status groups, even in the absence of conflict between groups.     

I like you,I like you not: Understanding the formation of context-dependent automatic attitudes

Previous research has shown that automatic evaluations can be highly context dependent. Expanding on past research demonstrating context effects for existing attitudes toward familiar objects, the present research examined basic principles that guide the formation of context-dependent versus context-independent automatic attitudes. Results from four experiments showed that: (a) newly formed attitudes generalised to novel contexts when prior experiences with the attitude object were evaluatively homogeneous; (b) when prior experiences were evaluatively heterogeneous, automatic evaluations became context sensitive, such that they reflected the contingency between the valence of prior experiences and the context in which these experiences occurred; and (c) when prior experiences were evaluatively heterogeneous across different contexts, novel contexts elicited automatic evaluations that reflected the valence of first experiences with the attitude object. Implications for research on automatic evaluation and attitude change are discussed.