Implicit Social Cognition

Given the prominence of Muslim veils—in particular the hijab and full-face veil—in public discourse concerning the place of Muslims in Western society, we examined their impact on non-Muslims’ responses at both explicit and implicit levels. Results revealed that responses were more negative toward any veil compared with no veil, and more negative toward the full-face veil relative to the hijab: for emotions felt toward veiled women (Study 1), for non-affective attitudinal responses (Study 2), and for implicit negative attitudes revealed through response latency measures (Studies 3a and 3b). Finally, we manipulated the perceived reasons for wearing a veil, finding that exposure to positive reasons for wearing a veil led to better predicted and imagined contact (Study 4). Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Implicit attitudes are automatically activated evaluative impulses that are difficult to control and potentially outside conscious awareness. The association of implicit attitudes toward psychiatric medication with treatment adherence and insight was investigated in 85 persons with schizophrenia, schizoaffective, or affective disorders using the Brief Implicit Association Test. Explicit attitudes, insight, perceived need for treatment and adherence were measured by self-report. Implicit, but not explicit, positive attitudes predicted increased insight and perceived need for treatment. Explicit, but not implicit, positive attitudes predicted selfreported adherence. Implicit measures can improve our understanding of medication attitudes and evaluation of interventions to increase treatment adherence.

This research examines the extent to which the negative arousal caused by valence inconsistent supraliminal behavioral information and subliminal primes during attitude formation affects people's perceptions of their current well-being. Participants who received inconsistent information about a novel individual during an impression formation task reported more negative arousal, lower self-esteem, greater depression, and greater perceived stress than those in a control condition. Mediational analyses indicated that negative arousal stemming from attitude formation with valence inconsistent information guided participants' responses to well-being measures via misattribution of this arousal. These results cannot be explained by a simple response bias because recall of negative physical symptoms in the past 2 weeks were unaffected by receiving valence inconsistent information. This research suggests that the spillover of negative arousal from attitude formation, when unable to be easily attributed to the attitude object, served as a cue that people utilized when determining how they felt.

Most contemporary text books of neurology and of psychology pay little attention to the function of the cerebellum beyond noting it to be an organ of motor control. A historical overview of research on cerebellar function is presented, from pre-Sherrinton suggestions of sensory and motor function, through the post-Sherrinton and dominant 20 th . Century view of "motor" function, to the 21 st . century perspective of "sensorimotor" function. The intrinsic capability of the cerebellum is briefly considered in terms of: its size/complexity/capacity; its information representation/processing characteristics (with "a particular computational function"); its sensory information processing capability; and, its role in sensorimotor regulatory control. It is suggested that the cerebellum can process sensorimotor stimulus information in a statistical (connectionist type) manner and respond to in on the basis of its own learning based sensorimotor representations, albeit at a "level" that does not necessarily involve cerebral "awareness".

Self-reported measures of driving skills have the potential shortcomings of the general self-report methodology such as social responding and self-enhancement biases. In the present study, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) procedure was adapted to measure the implicit evaluations of driving skills. The performance of IAT and an explicit, self-report measure of driving skills were compared in predicting driver behaviors and performance. Ninety-one Turkish male drivers participated in the study. The results showed that the implicit test and the self-reported driving skills scale showed different patterns of relationships with the outcome measures in the regression analyses. In addition, the implicit measure of driving skills moderated the relationship between self-reported driving skills and some of the outcome measures used in the current study. These results support the need to use the implicit measures in addition to self-report measures to better understand drivers evaluations of their driving skills, which has the potential to influence their risky driving.

The implicit association test (IAT) and concept of implicit bias have significantly influenced the scientific, institutional, and public discourse on racial prejudice. In spite of this, there has been little investigation of how ordinary people make sense of the IAT and the bias it claims to measure. This article examines the public understanding of this research through a discourse analysis of reactions to the IAT and implicit bias in the news media. It demonstrates the ways in which readers interpreted, related to, and negotiated the claims of IAT science in relation to socially shared and historically embedded concerns and identities. IAT science was discredited in accounts that evoked discourses about the marginality of academic preoccupations, and helped to position test-takers as targets of an oppressive political correctness and psychologists as liberally biased. Alternatively, the IAT was understood to have revealed widely and deeply held biases toward racialized others, eliciting accounts that took the form of psycho-moral confessionals. Such admissions of bias helped to constitute moral identities for readers that were firmly positioned against racial bias. Our findings are discussed in terms of their implications for using the IAT in prejudice reduction interventions, and communicating to the public about implicit bias.

The current work examined police officers' decisions to shoot Black and White criminal suspects in a computer simulation. Responses to the simulation revealed that upon initial exposure to the program, the officers were more likely to mistakenly shoot unarmed Black compared with unarmed White suspects. However, after extensive training with the program, in which the race of the suspect was unrelated to the presence of a weapon, the officers were able to eliminate this bias. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the elimination of racial biases and the training of police officers.

The current work examined police officers decisions to shoot Black and White criminal suspects in a computer simulation. Responses to the simulation revealed that upon initial exposure to the program, the officers were more likely to mistakenly shoot unarmed Black compared with unarmed White suspects. However, after extensive training with the program, in which the race of the suspect was unrelated to the presence of a weapon, the officers were able to eliminate this bias. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the elimination of racial biases and the training of police officers.

What can we do—and what should we do—to fight against bias? This final chapter introduces empirically-tested interventions for combating implicit (and explicit) bias and promoting a fairer world, from small daily-life debiasing tricks to larger structural interventions. Along the way, this chapter raises a range of moral, political, and strategic questions about these interventions. This chapter further stresses the importance of admitting that we don’t have all the answers. We should be humble about how much we still don’t know and dedicate efforts to gathering as much knowledge as possible. Even so, we know enough now to start making a difference, and this chapter ultimately aims to chip away at the gap between our abstract commitments to treat people fairly and our lived habits and experiences, which continue to be shaped by implicit and explicit prejudices and stereotypes about race, gender, and other social categories.

Behavior Effectiveness) is a research program focusing on culture and leadership in 61 nations. National cultures are examined in terms of nine dimensions: performance orientation, future orientation, assertiveness, power distance, humane orientation, institutional collectivism, in-group collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and gender egalitarianism. In a survey of thousands of middle managers in food processing, ®nance, and telecommunications industries in these countries, GLOBE compares their cultures and attributes of effective leadership. Six global leadership attributes are identi®ed and discussed. #

The current study presents a preliminary evaluation of a Spanish adaptation of an implicit analog procedure, the Parent–child Aggression Acceptability Movie task (Spanish Parent-CAAM). Based on Social Information Processing theory , Spanish Parent-CAAM scores were expected to relate to self-reported PCA attitudes, negative child attributions, and child abuse risk in Spanish students; 245 undergraduates in Spain completed the Spanish Parent-CAAM along with self-report measures of PCA attitudes, negative children attribu-tions, inclination to punish misbehavior, and child abuse risk. Findings indicate Spanish Parent-CAAM scores were significantly related to explicit measures of PCA, attributions of intentional child misbehavior, propensity to punish such mis-behavior, and increased child abuse potential. Results are considered within the cultural context of Spain's corporal punishment ban and PCA attitudes.

We tested the hypothesis that Faith in Intuition (FI) would moderate implicit–explicit attitude relationship strength for attitudes formed via associative processes, but not propositional processes. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that FI moderated I–E relationship strength for attitudes formed via evaluative conditioning. High FI people had stronger I–E correlations. Experiment 2 showed that FI did not moderate I–E relationship strength for attitudes formed via propositional reasoning. Those low in Need for Cognition (NC), however, showed stronger I–E correlations than those high in NC. The importance of considering trait variables in combination with the method of attitude formation is discussed.

La definición de las competencias sociales y emocionales no ha sido tarea fácil para los psicólogos. Existen varios criterios e indicios que permiten evaluar en qué medida los niños y los adultos se comportan de forma competente. No obstante, la educación formal recibida para alcanzar dichas competencias es, por lo general, muy escasa o nula. Los resultados de los programas clásicos basados en el aprendizaje de técnicas específicas indican que se produce muy poca generalización a contextos naturales y que la duración de los efectos de mejora es muy corta. Existen, sin embargo, otro tipo de intervenciones que apoyándose en la filosofía e incitando a los niños a reflexionar de forma crítica, proporcionan una formación más profunda y resultados más duraderos. Nuestra propuesta defiende un currículo centrado en la mejora de estas competencias durante el segundo ciclo de Educación Infantil (3-6 años) trabajando desde un enfoque basado en el programa Filosofía para Niños pero que también ofrezca la posibilidad de aprender pautas concretas de conducta, cognitivas y de relación con los demás. Palabras clave: Competencia social, competencia emocional, cultura, programas de intervención, Filosofía para Niños.

Concepts of "the self" and "self-awareness", and aspects of the experience of types of consciousness, are explored in terms of "cognitive" systems and their interactions. Some roles of the cerebrum, the cerebellum, and their interactions are considered in relation to sentient consciousness, the sense of self, and conscious regulation of behavior. This 'introductory paper' is composed of modified selected extracts from: totalBRAINtotalMIND Vol.1 : An Integrated Brain/Mind Architecture Part 2: A Cognitive Architecture (pp16 -136) Part 3. Total Brain: structure, development, function, and an integrated neurocognitive architecture (pp137-321). tBtM Vol.1 is now available as an e-book from: http://totalbraintotalmind.co.uk/

This article examines the experience of being seen and analyzes its central role in the formation of a coherent sense of self. Tove Jansson's short story from 1962, 'The Invisible Child', serves as the red thread of the article, and the story is analyzed in the light of Donald Winnicott's work on social mirroring. The analysis is enriched by the psychoanalytic insights of Veikko Tähkä and Heinz Kohut, and complemented by Axel Honneth's philosophical elaborations as well as by recent developmental findings as presented by Vasudevi Reddy. The article is divided into an introduction and three sections. After summarizing Jansson's story in the introduction, the first section elaborates and examines different senses of social invisibility. The second section assesses developmental factors that promote social invisibility and highlights the importance of being seen. The third and final section interprets Jansson's story as an analogy to an intensive therapeutic process, while pinpointing those elements that facilitate the restructuring of a disturbed sense of self. As a whole, the article thus discusses an issue that is often simply taken for granted in discussions of empathy and interpersonal experience: social visibility.

Five experiments investigated the hypothesis that perspective taking--actively contemplating others' psychological experiences--attenuates automatic expressions of racial bias. Across the first 3 experiments, participants who adopted the perspective of a Black target in an initial context subsequently exhibited more positive automatic interracial evaluations, with changes in automatic evaluations mediating the effect of perspective taking on more deliberate interracial evaluations. Furthermore, unlike other bias-reduction strategies, the interracial positivity resulting from perspective taking was accompanied by increased salience of racial inequalities (Experiment 3). Perspective taking also produced stronger approach-oriented action tendencies toward Blacks (but not Whites; Experiment 4). A final experiment revealed that face-to-face interactions with perspective takers were rated more positively by Black interaction partners than were interactions with nonperspective takers--a relationship that was mediated by perspective takers' increased approach-oriented nonverbal behaviors (as rated by objective, third-party observers). These findings indicate that perspective taking can combat automatic expressions of racial biases without simultaneously decreasing sensitivity to ongoing racial disparities.

The unconscious mind tends to disregard negations in its processing of semantic meaning. Therefore, messages containing negated concepts can ironically prime mental representations and evaluations that are opposite to those intended. We hypothesized that the subtle presentation of a negated concept (e.g., “no smoking”) would activate ironic motivational orientations as well. We tested this hypothesis in a public health context. Smokers viewed photographs in which no-smoking signs were either inconspicuously embedded (prime) or edited out (control). Primed smokers showed amplified automatic approach tendencies toward smoking-related stimuli, but not toward smoking-unrelated stimuli. Since passive priming effects generally serve to facilitate forms of action, not inhibit them, anti-smoking and other public health campaigns may ironically increase the very behaviors they seek to reduce.

The conceptual framework of this leadership model is that leaders who practice certain leadership styles, according to subordinates' expectations of gender stereotypes, could influence the subordinate commitment to superior. Does a leader's gender and subordinates' perceived leadership style influence the subordinates' commitment to supervisor? This study was designed to accomplish a dual purpose: (a) to determine if there is a relationship between subordinates' perception of leadership style and subordinate commitment to his/her leader and (b) to determine if supervisor's gender moderates the relationship between the perceived leadership style and subordinate commitment to his/her leader. Responses were received from a total of 117 self-reported participants through social networking. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated that path-goal leadership styles can predict subordinates' commitment to superior; however, gender only predicts subordi...

People think and feel more negatively about outgroup members, even though such attitudes are rarely expressed explicitly; people may be unaware of them or express them only symbolically. The literature suggests that, cross-culturally, negative attitudes against outgroup members are more pronounced among men than among women, and that implicit negativity may be malleable by visual or textual stimuli. This study used two experiments to explore the effects of news stories about African Americans and Native Americans on implicit attitudes toward these groups. Story valence and participant gender were the main independent variables. In the first study, participants took the Implicit Associations Test (IAT) before and after reading news stories about professionally accomplished African Americans, who had overcome poverty and discrimination. The results suggested that these stories did abate implicit bias against African Americans; the effect was weak but statistically significant. Contrary to expectations, the degree of bias abatement was not significantly different in men versus women. In the second study, participants took the Implicit Associations Test (IAT) before and after reading news stories about either successful Native Americans or about tragic events (murder, suicide) involving Native Americans. Both types of stories detailed systemic obstacles faced by Native Americans and participants assigned to either category showed a decrease in negative attitudes on the post-test IAT; however, this abatement effect was statistically significant only after exposure to narratives that culminated in tragic events. Bias abatement was more pronounced on women than on men. Empathy and intergroup contact are discussed as possible factors in decreasing implicit bias against members of minority groups.

We evaluated how brand recall and persuasion knowledge combined to affect brand attitudes and brand self-identification following product placement. In two experiments (N 􏰀 296), implicit brand self-identification for a placed brand increased regardless of brand recall and persuasion knowledge activation. In contrast, brand recall led to increased brand attitudes when persuasion knowledge was not primed, but decreased brand attitudes when it was primed. Our results suggest that product placement can affect both implicit and explicit measures, and that one placement experience can have both positive and negative consequences depending on brand recall and whether viewers are primed to think about product placement.

This research, conducted by the author when a Senior Researcher at Newcastle University, UK, was funded by a UK governance organisation to help them assess, integrate and improve their understanding of the governed population.

ABSTRACT: Governance organisations have been urged to develop more holistic evidence-based approaches with partners to better deal with issues affecting the governed population. This presupposes an understanding of the population, yet there has been little research work addressing how governance organisations come to understand their governed population, nor how this understanding can be improved upon within such organisations.

This case study examined in-depth how understanding of a governed population was developed within one UK local governance organisation and it explored how such understanding might be developed and improved through more holistic and evidence-based organisational learning within the organisation and its governance partnerships.

The research methodology involved placement within the governance organisation, participant observations on several projects and innovative initiatives, observations within, across, and outside the organisation, and also interviews with varied key stakeholders.

The study examined:

- stakeholder engagement and networks
- current and varied understandings of the population
- mechanisms actually used for developing understandings
- the influence of context on organisational learning

and analysed these to arrive at a recommendations to improve organisational understanding of the governed population.

In the case studied, significant strengths were found: including innovative past learning trials for development, extensive ongoing networking activities, and many varied and accumulating quantitative datasets available across partnerships.

However, entrenched organisational approaches and practices constrained the development of holistic evidence-based understanding, for instance: the absence of systematic maintained collective learning processes; weak recording and forgetting of understandings; methodological exclusion of stakeholders from the development of understanding; the relative neglect of qualitative data, explanations, investigations, interpretations, and reflexivity; and also implicit organisational acceptance of such limitations and low aspirations.

Nonetheless, untapped opportunities existed to enable change including: latent practitioner knowledge and innovative management champions, the desire for improvement and raised aspirations within learning networks, and the development potential of alterative learning approaches.

It was concluded that more holistic evidence-based understanding was possible, but required new learning approaches beyond those then in use in both local government or academia.   

Recommendations are made to utilise and develop improved organisational learning approaches trialed and reported in the case study.

It is argued that the case study findings, conclusions, and recommendations may be applicable to other similar local governance organisations and partnerships that seek to better understand local populations, services and interventions.

The work was also submitted for, and awarded, an MPhil (at Newcastle University, supervised by Prof. Patsy Healy)

A correlational study of personality traits in the scope of dual-level, explicit (central) and implicit (associative), social information processing models is presented. The Big Five personality traits model has been studied according to the multitrait-multimethod methodology. Explicit personality traits were measured by three questionnaires, whereas implicit personality traits were measured by five Implicit Association Tests. Implicit measures demonstrated a relatively appropriate divergent validity regarding various personality traits. However, single-factor solution of implicit personality measures fits our data perfectly good which allowed us to support the hypothesis of general personality factor by Musek (2007) and Rushton et al. (2009) in respect to implicit personality traits. On the other hand, single-factor solution of explicit personality traits measured with Big Five Inventory fits poorly the data.
В статье представлено корреляционное исследование черт личности в соответствии с предположением о двух уровнях обработки социальной информации индивидом: эксплицитном (центральном) и имплицитном (ассоциативном). На выборке, состоящей из 152 студентов университета, изучалась Большая Пятерка черт личности в рамках парадигмы многопараметрического комплексного анализа. Эксплицитные черты измерялись посредством вопросника Big Five Inventory, имплицитные черты измерялись Тестом имплицитных ассоциаций (Implicit Association Test). Имплицитные тесты черт личности демонстрировали 1-факторную структуру и существенные отличия от эксплицитных черт и структуры в целом. 1-факторная модель имплицитных черт позволила поддержать гипотезу об общем факторе личности на уровне имплицитных черт. Экстраверсия продемонстрировала наибольшую согласованность эксплицитного и имплицитного уровней. Доброжелательность и открытость опыту не согласованы на эксплицитном и имплицитном уровнях. Полученные результаты реплицируют данные, полученные в ряде зарубежных исследований. Утверждается, что на первом этапе тестирования имплицитных свойств индивиды эффективно управляют своими реакциями, что выражается в более длительных и социально желательных реакциях.

Гумор є необхідним компонентом спілкування, разом з тим багато характеристик гумору, зокрема його прагматика, недостатньо вивчені. Одною з характеристик міжкультурного спілкування є непорозуміння, які виникають під час комунікативного процесу, що відбувається в силу відмінностей у культурі. Вони потребують лінгвокультурного пояснення під час перекладу з урахуванням якомога точнішої передачі імпліцитного змісту. Пояснення і попередження таких комунікативних непорозумінь, викликаних особливостями англійського гумору, є дуже важливим як для лінгвістичної теорії, так і для практики міжкультурного спілкування.

The conceptual framework of this leadership model is that leaders who practice certain leadership styles, according to subordinates’  expectations of gender stereotypes, could influence the subordinate commitment to superior. Does a leader’s gender and subordinates’ perceived leadership style influence the subordinates’ commitment to
supervisor? This study was designed to accomplish a dual purpose: (a) to determine if there is a relationship between subordinates’  perception of leadership style and subordinate commitment to his/her leader and (b) to determine if supervisor’s gender moderates the relationship between the perceived leadership style and subordinate
commitment to his/her leader. Responses were received from a total of 117 self reported participants through social networking.  hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated that path-goal leadership styles can predict subordinates’ commitment to superior; however, gender only predicts subordinates’ commitment to
superior for achievement-oriented and directive styles. Further comparison of regression coefficients indicated no statistically significant difference between male and female leadership styles and subordinates’ commitment to the superior.

Social scientists and folk views have long had it that there is an association between religiosity and prosocial behaviour, but hard evidence for such a relationship is limited. Studies show that religiosity is correlated with self-reported prosociality, however this relationship is not very clear when it comes to observed prosocial behaviours. Experimental studies reveal a link between religious priming and prosocial behaviours, and remarkably such effects hold irrespectively of degrees of religiosity. Building on and combining the strengths of previous field designs, I report here the results of a field experiment in Mauritius examining the effects of religious environments on cooperation in a naturalistic setting. These results were consistent with previous findings that religious cues may increase cooperation. Importantly, this effect was not dependent on degrees of prior religiosity. Plausible interpretations of such effects are discussed.

Manche Menschen mit betont selbstbewusstem Auftreten scheinen Gefallen daran zu finden, andere zu erniedrigen. Wieso haben sie das nötig? Die jüngste psychologische Forschung zeigt: Tief drinnen ist es mit dem Selbstbewusstsein dieser Leute nicht allzu weit her.

is obscured because of the compelling actuality of our dualistic experience within the dualistic forms of phenomena. Phenomena is compelling! Our indivisibleness within each other and our indivisibleness with Being is obscured and made invisible by the dramatic compelling experience of the different range and forms of our experience such as pleasure and pain, happiness and horror, anxiety and relational yearning, sex and death, starvation and torture, to name a few.

The research from cognitive psychology has found a promising path of application in the field of branding and consumer
behaviour. In this paper, we review the most striking findings in implicit cognition that are relevant to the research on
evaluations and decision making. In doing this, we expect to clarify the possible scope of cognitive psychology as a potential
tool for research in consumer psychology. In particular, we discuss the possible implications of this line of research for the
developing of two specific areas: subliminal advertising and implicit measures of brand perception.

In spite of the remarkable progress made in the burgeoning field of social neuroscience, the neural mechanisms that underlie social encounters are only beginning to be studied and couldparadoxicallybe seen as representing the "dark matter" of social neuroscience. Recent conceptual and empirical developments consistently indicate the need for investigations that allow the study of real-time social encounters in a truly interactive manner. This suggestion is based on the premise that social cognition is fundamentally different when we are in interaction with others rather than merely observing them. In this article, we outline the theoretical conception of a second-person approach to other minds and review evidence from neuroimaging, psychophysiological studies, and related fields to argue for the development of a second-person neuroscience, which will help neuroscience to really "go social"; this may also be relevant for our understanding of psychiatric disorders construed as disorders of social cognition.

Countless everyday activities require us to coordinate our actions and decisions with others. Coordination not only enables us to achieve instrumental goals, but has also been shown to boost commitment, leading people to persevere with an interaction even when their motivation wavers. So far, little is known about the mechanism by which coordination generates commitment. To investigate this, we conducted two experiments which represented very different coordination problems: coordination of movement timing on a joint drumming task (Experiment 1) and coordination of decision-making on a joint object matching task (Experiment 2). In both experiments, the similarity of the participant and partner was manipulated by varying whether or not they had perceptual access to the participant’s workspace, and the participants’ attribution of (un)willingness to invest effort into the joint action by adapting was manipulated by varying whether or not the participant believed their partner had perceptual access. As a measure of commitment, we registered how much participants’ persisted on a boring and effortful task to earn points for their partners. Participants were significantly less committed to earning points for unadaptive partners than for adaptive partners, but only when they believed that their partner was unwilling to adapt rather than unable to adapt. This demonstrates that coordination can generate commitment insofar as it provides a cue that one’s partner is willing to invest effort to adapt for the good of the interaction. Moreover, we demonstrate that this effect generalises across different kinds of coordination.

Abstract

This experimental case study seeks to understand the changes in physiological activity during and following an Authentic Movement experience. A CapnoTrainer™ biofeedback instrument was used to measure heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), capnometry, and measurement of end-tidal Carbon Dioxide (ETCO2) during and following Authentic Movement activity. The results showed an increase in parasympathetic activity while maintaining high sympathetic activation during stages of movement (segments 5 & 6) where the mover reported "being moved."  In addition, an unusual increase in HRV was found during movement and speaking about the experience following movement. Future studies are recommended to evaluate the effectiveness of Authentic Movement as a self-regulatory process of the autonomic nervous system in relation to HRV as an indicator of psychophysiological health.

Keywords: Authentic Movement; Autonomic Nervous System; Biofeedback;  Dance/Movement Therapy; self regulation, heart rate variability

In accordance with Terror Management Theory research, secular beliefs can serve an important role for mitigating existential concerns by providing atheists with a method to attain personal meaning and bolster self-esteem. Although much research has suggested that religious beliefs are powerful defense mechanisms, these effects are limited or reveal more nuanced effects when attempting to explain atheists’ (non)belief structures. The possibility of nonbelief that provides meaning in the “here and now” is reinforced by the importance placed on scientific discovery, education, and social activism by many atheists. Thus, these values and ideologies can, and do, allow for empirically testable claims within a Terror Management framework. Although religious individuals can and largely do use religion as a defense strategy against existential concerns, purely secular ideologies are more effective for atheists providing evidence for a hierarchical approach and individual differences within worldview defenses. Evidence for and implications of these arguments are discussed.

Acknowledgements: This project was supported by Project Implicit, Inc. Nosek is an officer and Hawkins is a consultant of Project Implicit, a non-profit 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."

Discussions of issues confronting law enforcement can be enhanced by using a social psychological perspective that emphasizes the importance of contexts’ influence on internal capacities and characteristics to the understanding of human behavior.  This chapter shows the utility of such an approach within the context of racial disparities in policing.  We focus on judgments of fairness, especially as it pertains to how officers treat people and make decisions, and outline how racial disparities drive the perception that law enforcement is procedurally unfair and serve to erode public trust and support for the law.  Attention is then turned to how normal mental functioning that is essential to social behavior can promote such disparities in even the most egalitarian individuals.  In particular, we describe (1) the role of implicit racial bias and how automatic associations between racial groups and criminality can motivate differential behavior and (2) the importance of social identity and how threats to that identity can evoke responses that facilitate racial disparities.

A longstanding and influential thought is that for democracies to function well—or perhaps to function at all—they need vigorous but reasonable public discourse. The ideal is that they should be spaces of reasons—spaces where reasons for policy decisions can be exchanged and maybe even listened to. Yet there is mounting evidence suggesting that not only are human beings subject to biases and errors in reasoning, but we are also particularly bad at spotting when they are affecting us. As a result, one might suspect that we should be deeply skeptical about whether public discourse can ever be reasonable.

In this paper, we follow this suspicion to its logical conclusion, raising a novel skeptical argument based on the problem of what we’ll call “bad-bias.” This skeptical argument, we believe, raises a serious challenge to the possibility of reasonable public discourse. Even so, reflection on the argument also points us toward new ways of confronting this challenge—a challenge that arguably goes to the heart of democracy itself.

How do cognition and affect interact to produce action? Research in intergroup psychology illuminates this question by investigating the relationship between stereotypes and prejudices about social groups. Yet it is now clear that many social attitudes are implicit (roughly, nonconscious or involuntary). This raises the question: how does the distinction between cognition and affect apply to implicit mental states? An influential view—roughly analogous to a Humean theory of action—is that " implicit stereotypes " and " implicit prejudices " constitute two separate constructs, reflecting different mental processes and neural systems. On this basis, some have also argued that interventions to reduce discrimination should combat implicit stereotypes and prejudices separately. We propose an alternative (anti-Humean) framework. We argue that all putative implicit stereotypes are affect-laden and all putative implicit prejudices are " semantic, " that is, they stand in co-activating associations with concepts and beliefs. Implicit biases, therefore, consist in " clusters " of semantic-affective associations, which differ in degree, rather than kind. This framework captures the psychological structure of implicit bias, promises to improve the power of indirect measures to predict behavior, and points toward the design of more effective interventions to combat discrimination.

In spite of the remarkable progress made in the burgeoning field of social neuroscience, the neural mechanisms that underlie social encounters are only beginning to be studied and could —paradoxically— be seen as representing the ‘dark matter’ of social neuroscience. Recent conceptual and empirical developments consistently indicate the need for investigations, which allow the study of real-time social encounters in a truly interactive manner. This suggestion is based on the premise that social cognition is fundamentally different when we are in interaction with others rather than merely observing them. In this article, we outline the theoretical conception of a second-person approach to other minds and review evidence from neuroimaging, psychophysiological studies and related fields to argue for the development of a second-person neuroscience, which will help neuroscience to really go social; this may also be relevant for our understanding of psychiatric disorders construed as disorders of social cognition.

The ability to produce meaningful evaluations of the external world (i.e., attitudes) is critical for adaptive functioning. However, to be fully adaptive, such evaluations must be flexible enough to change when circumstances warrant. The psychological processes involved in attitude change have been the subject of intensive investigation for over 50 years. We review the major themes of this literature,
paying particular attention to the distinction between explicitly endorsed propositional evaluations and more automatic forms of evaluative response, often referred to as implicit attitudes. In particular, we begin by discussing the precursors of attitudinal stability versus malleability. Next, we review the role of learning in producing attitude change, with a focus on both propositional learning and affective
conditioning. We then consider how external constraints on behavior and changes in evaluative context can lead to the modification of attitudes. Finally, we consider the determinants and mechanisms of resistance to attitude change.

The study extends the line of research on implicit personality traits. The article represents the results concerning the interrelatedness of explicit, implicit, and peer measures of personality traits according to the Big Five model as well as their behavioral indicators. Modification of Implicit Association Test according to the Big Five model is described. The participants were students of a Russian university. Advantages and disadvantages, limitations and artifacts of both explicit and implicit personality traits are considered. The study confirms recent results that implicit extraversion is able to predict relevant behavioral indicators. Moreover, a number of explicit traits measures as well as peer assessments of personality traits predicted various behavioral indicators. Generally speaking, our results suggest that explicit and peer measures exhibit somewhat higher predicitve validity toward relevant behaviors than implicit measures of personality traits. Taking into account that we used an intraindividual design administering IAT, we have discovered that reaction time was affected by the order effect such that the participants reacted significantly slower in the first series than in the following seria. We have also discovered that after exclusion of the first series' data, the intercorrelations between impilcit traits as well as relationships between implicit traits and both explicit personality traits and behavioral indicators have become substantially and consistently stronger. We thus may assume that predictive validity of implicit measures of personality traits depends on the restrictions of conscious control of one's responses toward implicit stimuli affected by fatigue, cognitive load, etc. Theoretical and methodological implications of the implicit tests application in psychology of individual differences are discussed.