The impact of valenced verbal information on implicit and explicit evaluation: the role of information diagnosticity, primacy, and memory cueing

ABSTRACT

Previous research has shown that the presentation of valenced information about a target stimulus sometimes has different effects on implicit and explicit stimulus evaluations. Importantly, however, research examining the moderators of implicit-explicit dissociations has often failed to account for differences in the properties of the instruments used to measure implicit and explicit evaluations, preventing a clear interpretation of the results. In an effort to overcome these limitations, we conducted a study that probed the impact of valenced information on implicit and explicit evaluations as measured with procedures that were matched on methodological factors. Participants first read positive and negative information about a person named Bob and then completed measures of implicit and explicit evaluations of Bob. We examined the moderating effect of three characteristics: information diagnosticity, primacy, and whether information retrieval was cued during evaluation. Results of two high-powered experiments showed an effect of diagnosticity on implicit and explicit evaluations, replicating previous work, and extending it to new evaluation measures. We observed primacy effects on explicit evaluations in Experiment 1 and on implicit evaluations in Experiment 2. However, we did not observe memory cueing effects or any interactions. We discuss practical implications as well as implications for cognitive evaluation theories.

KEYWORDS:

• Implicit evaluation
• implicit-explicit dissociation
• structural fit
• diagnosticity
• memory cueing
• primacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Pieter Van Dessel http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3401-780X

Jan De Houwer http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0488-5224

Additional information

Funding

The research reported in this paper was funded by the Scientific Research Foundation, Flanders under Grant FWO16/PDO/201 to PVD, by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under grant GA 1520/2-1 to AG and by the Ghent University Methusalem Grant BOF09/01M00209 to JDH. There was no potential conflict of interest to report.