Contrast effects in priming paradigms: Implications for theory and research on implicit attitudes.

Full Abstract

Contrast effects have been studied in dozens of experimental paradigms, including the measurement of attitudes in the social psychological literature. However, nearly all of this work has been conducted using explicit reports. In the present research the authors employed a variety of different types of priming tasks in order to gain insight into the nature of contrast effects and the role that automatic processes might play in their emergence. They report 6 experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2 the replicability and robustness of automatized contrast effects across 2 types of implicit tasks are established. Experiments 3-6 were conducted in order to further understand the nature of these effects and whether they are best understood in terms of spreading activation vs. response-based models of priming. In the course of accounting for their findings, the authors propose and validate a response-mapping framework, which provides insight into some longstanding ambiguities in the priming literature. Implications for theories of contrast and models of evaluative priming are discussed. (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved

Author information

Author/s: Scherer, Laura D (LD); Lambert, Alan J (AJ);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Washington University, St Louis, MO 63130, USA. scherer(-atsign-)wustl.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Journal of personality and social psychology (J Pers Soc Psychol), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Sep; vol 97 (issue 3) : pp 383-403

Dates: Created 2009/08/18; Completed 2009/09/25;

PMID: 19685997, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 9/25/2009, IMS Date: )

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