Abstract
Implicit attitude change. Recent attitude research has focused considerable attention on the distinction between implicit and explicit social judgments. Relative to explicit measures, implicit measur es (e.g., sequential priming, Implicit Associative Test) are more likely to assess judgments that are fast, unintentional, uncontrollable, unconscious, or nonreactive. In contrast, explicit measures (e.g., questionnaire measures) often assess intentional judgments that involve greater awareness, control, deliberation, or social editing. The general assumption is that implicit attitudes (i.e., automatic evaluation) are strong, stab le, and resistant to change. Our research suggested that implicit attitudes are not immutable and can be persuaded. Participants were asked to read a persuasive message, composed by strong or weak arguments. Both explicit and implicit attitudes toward the proposal were assessed. The explicit measures of the attitudes did not reveal any change, w hereas the implicit measures showed a significant effect of the argument quality, specially for those participants high in need for cognition.
