Health Practitioners' Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Toward Drug Addicts Predict Absenteeism and Extra Work

We analyzed the correspondence between implicit and explicit attitudes of health care practitioners working with drug addicts as a function of years of professional experience, and its relation with important organizational outcomes. Consistent with the hypothesis that implicit–explicit attitude inconsistency is unpleasant and people struggle to resolve it, practitioners' implicit–explicit consistency increased with years of experience. Moreover, for practitioners self-reporting positive attitudes, negative implicit attitudes led to increased absenteeism and decreased voluntary extra work. For practitioners self-reporting negative attitudes, positive automatic associations had similar effects. Strengths, limitations, and possible extensions of this research are discussed.