Trying But Failing: Implicit Attitude Transfer Is Not Eliminated by Overt or Subtle Objectivity Manipulations

Abstract

Attitude transfer is the phenomenon whereby attitudes toward group members generalize automatically to new individuals in the same group. Although robust at the implicit level, people consciously adjust this guilt-by-association thinking when reporting explicit attitudes (Ranganath & Nosek, 2008). We tested whether people could control implicit attitude transfer if given proper motivation and instruction. We attempted to induce intentional control over attitude transfer using a variety of established methods, but in 8 studies, implicit attitudes formed and transferred to new group members. We conclude that implicit attitude transfer is a robust automatic phenomenon that is not disrupted by intentional control.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Hawkins and Ratliff are consultants of Project Implicit, Inc., a nonprofit organization that includes in its mission “to develop and deliver methods for investigating and applying phenomena of implicit social cognition, including especially phenomena of implicit bias based on age, race, gender or other factors.” We report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions (if any), all manipulations, and all measures in the study. Data are available at https://osf.io/project/4TEX5/.

Notes

¹A second demonstration of attitude transfer is evidenced by similar effect sizes for evaluations of the original products and the new products (i.e., they are evaluated equally). For example, if Vode body lotion is positive and Veani body lotion is negative, attitude transfer would be demonstrated if participants' evaluations of Vode body lotion/Veani body lotion do not differ from their evaluations of Vode deodorant/Veani deodorant. This method for demonstrating attitude transfer requires direct assessment of attitude formation. Attitude formation is reflected by assessment of attitudes toward the original consumer products (Veani and Vode body lotions) and demonstrates the effectiveness of the attitude induction paradigm to create positive and negative evaluations toward the novel targets. Due to study constraints, attitude formation is formally assessed only in Studies 5 to 8, where participants are randomly assigned to complete attitude assessments for the original group members (Reemolap and Vabbenif) or the new group members (Bosaalap and Ibbonif). Therefore, this method for demonstrating attitude transfer was tested only in Studies 5 to 8. Because the main focus of this article is on the controllability of attitude transfer, not attitude formation, and because the presence of attitude transfer implies attitude formation (Ranganath & Nosek, 2008; Ratliff & Nosek, 2011), we report attitude formation results and this second form of evidence for attitude transfer from Studies 5 to 8 in the supplementary materials posted on the project website (https://osf.io/project/4TEX5).