Moderators of the relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes
Preferences that are products of introspection and endorsed by the respondent (explicit attitudes) can conflict with preferences that are measured indirectly and do not require conscious introspection or endorsement (implicit attitudes). In three studies, two factors are examined that may predict when implicit and explicit attitudes will be associated or dissociated: self-presentation and attitude elaboration. In the first study, evidence that increasing self-presentation demands negatively affected implicit-explicit correspondence was observed through a manipulation of a public and a private context in which the attitude was reported. In the second study, elaborating an attitude for 20 minutes increased implicit-explicit correspondence compared to a control attitude. The third study reports a synthesis of web-based and laboratory tasks that varied in self-presentation and elaboration. Perceived self-presentation and elaboration produced stable differences in implicit-explicit correspondence such that attitude objects with low self-presentation concerns and high elaboration showed the strongest correspondence. These data suggest that existing models cannot sufficiently account for the relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes, and that the relationship between automatic and consciously mediated preferences is both reliable and predictable.