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The present article focuses on the automatic evaluation of exemplars whose category membership has been learned in the past. Studies 1 and 2 confirmed the hypothesis that once an exemplar has been encoded as a member of a given group, at a later encounter the evaluation associated with the group will be unintentionally retrieved from memory, even when no perceptual cue indicates the exemplar's category membership. Study 3 extended the results to the domain of in-group/out-group differentiation. In addition. Studies 4 and 5 confirmed the hypothesis that stored evaluations can be retrieved and affect responses even when the semantic information on which the evaluations were originally based is no longer available for retrieval. Finally, Study 6 investigated spontaneous approach-avoidance behavior tendencies. Overall, results demonstrate the pervasive effects of person-based representations, and they are discussed in terms of recent models of person perception and out-group discrimination.

Recent research has questioned the automaticity of stereotypical thinking by identifying factors that moderate the elicitation of this process. Extending this general line of inquiry, the present experiments investigated the effects of contextual factors on stereotype activation. It was anticipated that the manner in which triggering categorical cues are encountered would moderate the activation of stereotypical thinking. Specifically, it was predicted that briefly presented primes (i.e., difficult-to-process items) would not activate sex stereotypes when they were intermixed with primes that were easy to process (i.e., items presented for longer times). The results of two experiments supported this prediction. In addition, Experiment 2 showed that stereotype activation following the presentation of easy-to-process primes is moderated by individual differences in the endorsement of stereotypical beliefs. These findings are noteworthy because they demonstrate that contextual factors modulate stereotype activation at even the very early stages of social information processing.

In two studies, we investigated the structure of the Self-Liking/Self-Competence Scale – Revised (i.e., SLCS-R; Tafarodi & Swann, 2001), which was developed to measure two distinct dimensions of self-esteem: Self-competence and self-liking. In Study 1 we provided evidence that the two sub-scales actually address different aspects of self-esteem. In Study 2 with Confirmatory Factor Analysis we showed that a Multi-trait–Multi-method model including the dimensions of self-esteem as different traits, and positive versus negative wording of items as different methods, provided a superior fit to the data as compared to both a unidimensional model of self-esteem and to a bidimensional model not including the wording factor.

Extending recent investigations into the malleability of implicit ingroup favoritism, three experiments examined the role of indirect activation of equality and loyalty. Results showed that priming equality decreased implicit favoritism, measured through the Implicit Association Test and Go/No-Go Association Task, whereas priming loyalty enhanced it; spontaneous behavior (seating distance) was similarly influenced. A boundary condition was observed, namely change of intergroup setting: the effects of priming equality and loyalty ceased when these were primed after an irrelevant ingroup identity was made salient. In general, implicit favoritism can be reduced or increased after the activation of equality and loyalty respectively, and this underlines the importance of tackling discrimination by both lessening its expression, and removing factors that exacerbate it. © 2008 SAGE Publications.

Two studies assessed the predictive validity of implicit political attitudes in relation to voting behavior. In Study 1, we demonstrated the validity of the adopted measure (i.e., the IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) with a sample of voters who clearly sided with one of the opposing parties. In Study 2, implicit political preferences were measured in a sample of undecided voters one month before the election, and actual voting behavior was assessed immediately after the election. Results demonstrated that implicit political attitudes were good predictors of future voting behaviors. These findings support the hypothesis of the presence of embryonic attitudes even in the case of those voters who at the explicit and conscious level deny any preference for one of the two opposing candidates.

Questo volume delinea con chiarezza i percorsi metodologici più interessanti e innovativi che caratterizzano un settore della psicologia sociale sempre più presente nel mondo della ricerca e della didattica, quello della cognizione sociale. I capitoli prendono spunto ciascuno da un importante contributo scientifico per mettere a fuoco altrettanti problemi fondamentali della disciplina secondo uno schema espositivo comune: i contenuti della ricerca condotta vengono ordinatamente presentati e commentati, facendo riferimento agli aspetti del disegno sperimentale impiegato, alle elaborazioni statistiche adottate, alle conclusioni raggiunte. A questo materiale si aggiungono poi, sistematicamente, schede destinate a presentare nei dettagli gli strumenti e le tecniche impiegate nell'indagine

The present research investigated the development of multiple in-group identities among minority group members within a higher status majority. Explicit and implicit identification with the in-group (Southern Italy), out-group (Northern Italy), and a superordinate category (Italy) was examined in 29 Southern Italian students living in Northern Italy. On average, participants strongly identified with the in-group, and those who had spent more time in the north simultaneously displayed increased implicit identification with the out-group. As predicted, incorporation of the out-group into the self occurred only in participants who were not already strongly identified with the superordinate category. Implications for intergroup relations and well being of minority group members are discussed.