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The central government's policy attitude will affect local governments' innovation adoption behavior, but the diffusion process is not static, which shows dynamic changes. This essay illustrates the spreading process of the Chinese River Chief System (RCS). It discusses how the factors influencing the diffusion of the RCS alter dynamically under various policy attitudes of the central government by using the segmented Event History Analysis (EHA) and Piecewise Constant Exponential (PCE) models. The results found that, under the central government's implicit policy attitude, peer city pressure and official promotion increase the probability of adoption of the RCS. When the central government's policy encourages the attitude, intra-city factors and peer city pressure affect the diffusion of the RCS. Still, official promotion is no longer an influential influencing factor. All three factors are no longer practical when the central government introduces mandatory regulations. In addition, vertical higher-level pressure and horizontal peer city pressure on adopting the RCS are competitive rather than complementary relationships. Local governments' attitudes regarding the RCS went through a path of "good governance signal–governance tool–authority obedience" under the varied policy philosophies of the central government. Local governments pay more attention to the actual circumstances in the region due to the non-mandatory central government direction, which advances the art of adopting policies. Contrarily, the central government's stipulations render the other factors' policies obsolete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most sports are constitutive of the masculine identity, and these explicit gender perceptions influence sport participation. Less is known about implicit gender perceptions in sport, which may be instrumental in redefining the narrative of gender stereotypes and sport participation. This study explored gender differences in the implicit and explicit perceptions of sport. A total of 187 adults (45.45% female; Mage = 32.62 years, SDage = 13.07 years) completed an implicit association task by sorting sport words from the Canadian Women and Sport 'She's Got It All' campaign into gendered categories. Participants self-reported their explicit attitudes towards 10 campaign posters. Using independent sample t-tests, a moderate effect was observed for gender differences in implicit attitudes for sport. Men demonstrated significantly stronger implicit attitudes linking sport to masculine characteristics compared to women. Men reported significantly lower explicit positive attitudes for liking the posters, feeling motivated by them, and perceived relevance. Men and women did not differ on levels of uneasiness and self-consciousness. Results suggest that men maintain implicit gendered attitudes towards sport and report lower positive explicit attitudes to intentional gender equity media. Understanding the counterproductive role that men can play when enforcing stereotypical gendered sport beliefs is vital for advancing girls' and women's engagement in sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Proteus effect is a phenomenon found in over 60 studies where people tend to conform behaviorally to their avatars' identity characteristics, especially in virtual reality. This study extends research on the Proteus effect to consider organization-representing avatars and misogynistic behavioral outcomes. Male participants (N = 141) in a lab experiment embodied a set of pretested avatars which varied in level of association with a university mascot (i.e., color and body type) in a bespoke virtual reality simulation designed to elicit misogynistic behavior. Namely, participants were directed to place a hand on virtual agents' body parts, including the buttocks (i.e., a transgressive misogynistic act). Time delay in complying with directions to touch the agents' buttocks served as an implicit measure of resistance to this misogynistic behavior. Results suggest that within moderately masculine body-size avatar users, those who embodied a university-color-associated avatar exhibited more misogynistic behaviors (i.e., faster buttocks-touching). Unexpectedly, this effect of avatar color was not apparent within the hypermasculine body-size avatars, and within the university-associated color condition, hypermasculine body-type was associated with less misogynistic behavior. These findings suggest that organization-representing avatars may induce behavioral conformity to implicit attitudes associated with the organization, such as misogyny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although women drivers engage in fewer risky behaviors and have a lower involvement in traffic accidents than men, there is a commonly held stereotype that they are bad drivers. To understand this perception, various psychosocial factors related to sexism have been studied. However, very little is known about sexist attitudes towards women drivers, especially when studied through implicit attitude models. The aim of this study was to understand implicit and explicit sexist attitudes towards women drivers. A sample of N = 104 participants from Mar del Plata, Argentina, completed a stimulus classification task using response times to measure implicit attitudes, and three self-reporting measures of explicit attitudes, ambivalent sexism, and control of prejudices. The results indicated more positive implicit attitudes and low explicit antipathy towards women drivers. No age differences were found, but gender differences were observed (i.e., women showed more positive implicit and explicit attitudes towards their own group). Implicit and explicit attitudes showed a moderate correlation with each other and were not associated with a concern with acting prejudiced scale. Hostile sexism was a predictor of sexist driving attitudes. The results are discussed in the context of previous evidence on sexism in driving and implicit attitude models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a semantic analysis of control verbs in Japanese that take finite clauses marked by the nominalizer koto. We argue for an analysis in which the invisible subject of the embedded clause is a run-of-the-mill zero pronoun and where the obligatory coreference relation between the controller and the embedded subject is mediated by a primarily semantic factor. At the heart of our analysis lies the idea that there is a common underlying meaning shared across apparently heterogeneous classes of koto-taking control verbs, which consists of a causal relation between a volitional action inherent in the meaning of the verb and a de se attitude denoted by the embedded clause. The semantic analysis we offer not only explains language-internal properties of Japanese control verbs with respect to tense morpheme distribution that have been attributed to syntactic factors in the previous literature, but it also suggests a hitherto unnoticed possible cross-linguistic generalization about finite control and embedded tense interpretation which we dub 'hypothesis of relative tense in finite control.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the lateral attitude change (LAC) model, lateral (i.e., indirect) attitude change may occur in the absence of focal (i.e., direct) attitude change. To examine such displacement effects, we asked 124 participants to assume a teacher's role and grade two moderately good essays. They graded the first essay once before and once after they learned the (very good vs. very poor) grade the essay had allegedly received by a professor. Given that the professor's grade represented a blatant, disproportionate influence attempt, we hypothesized focal resistance (i.e., no attitude change toward the first essay) but a displacement effect (i.e., attitude change toward the second essay). Instead of displacement, results indicated generalization (focal and lateral effects). However, among participants who had resisted the influence attempt (n = 65), a displacement pattern was observed. Implications for the LAC model are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative peer attitudes are a significant barrier to social participation of students with disabilities in inclusive classrooms. Although many intervention studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of interaction or disability awareness programmes in promoting positive peer attitudes, reliance on students' self-reported attitudes is prone to social desirability bias and is unable to capture implicit prejudice. The present study examined changes in students' explicit and implicit attitudes toward peers with disabilities after a curriculum-based intervention programme ("Prinzip Vielfalt"), which aims to promote an open-minded attitude toward human diversity. Teachers in 12 primary school classes in the experimental group (n = 195 students) used the programme for eight weeks, whereas a control group of 12 classes (n = 191 students) used no intervention. Students' pre- and post-intervention attitudes were assessed using an adapted version of the Chedoke–McMaster Attitudes Towards Children with Handicaps Scale and a disability Implicit Association Test for children. Post-intervention analyses revealed a significant relative improvement in explicit attitudes toward peers with disabilities in the experimental group compared to the control group (b = 0.20, 95% CI = [0.03; 0.37]) but no change in implicit attitudes (b = -0.03, 95% CI = [-0.10; 0.03]). Thus, while the intervention positively affected self-reported attitudes, implicit negative associations were unchanged. Using explicit and implicit measures of attitudes and attitude changes among children can provide valuable insights into the mechanisms and effectiveness of different intervention strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Implicit Association Test (IAT), like many behavioral measures, seeks to quantify meaningful individual differences in cognitive processes that are difficult to assess with approaches like self-reports. However, much like other behavioral measures, many IATs appear to show low test-retest reliability and typical scoring methods fail to quantify all of the decision-making processes that generate the overt task performance. Here, we develop a new modeling approach for IATs based on the geometric similarity representation (GSR) model. This model leverages both response times and accuracy on IATs to make inferences about representational similarity between the stimuli and categories. The model disentangles processes related to response caution, stimulus encoding, similarities between concepts and categories, and response processes unrelated to the choice itself. This approach to analyzing IAT data illustrates that the unreliability in IATs is almost entirely attributable to the methods used to analyze data from the task: GSR model parameters show test-retest reliability around.80-.90, on par with reliable self-report measures. Furthermore, we demonstrate how model parameters result in greater validity compared to the IAT D-score, Quad model, and simple diffusion model contrasts, predicting outcomes related to intergroup contact and motivation. Finally, we present a simple point-and-click software tool for fitting the model, which uses a pre-trained neural network to estimate best-fit parameters of the GSR model. This approach allows easy and instantaneous fitting of IAT data with minimal demands on coding or technical expertise on the part of the user, making the new model accessible and effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on attitudes toward obesity has mainly focused on the effects of people's negative attitudes about obesity on others. However, it remains unclear whether people's explicit attitudes toward obesity may influence their own life satisfaction. This cross-sectional study investigated whether and how individuals' explicit negative attitudes toward obesity influence their own life satisfaction among Chinese adolescents. A total of 310 high school students from Hunan province, China, were invited to voluntarily complete a paper-and-pencil questionnaire, including the Attitudes Toward Obese Persons scale, the Fatness subscale of the Negative Physical Self Scale, and the Satisfaction With Life Scale. We also collected participants' self-reported body height and weight. The results revealed that adolescents with more negative explicit attitudes about obesity reported lower levels of life satisfaction, and that this relationship was mediated by their greater weight dissatisfaction. Additionally, weight status moderated the association between explicit attitudes toward obesity and one's life satisfaction, whereby more negative explicit attitudes toward obesity predicted lower life satisfaction in adolescents with a body mass index one standard deviation higher than the mean (21.00 + 3.35), but not for adolescents with a body mass index one standard deviation lower than the mean (21.00-3.35). Implications of the current research and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research found that when people are instructed to smile toward liked objects and show negative facial expressions toward disliked objects, their facial response is faster and more intense than when they are required to smile toward disliked objects and express negative facial response toward liked objects. The present research tested a technologically innovative indirect evaluation measure that was based on that finding. Participants completed an implicit association test (IAT)—a common indirect measure of evaluation, responding with their emotional facial expressions, rather than by pressing response keys. In two web studies, using emotional facial expression detection through a webcam, we found that the Facial Response IAT (FR-IAT) is a reliable and valid measure of evaluations, comparable to the keyboard IAT. Because facial responses provide more information than key responses, pursuing future improvements of the FR-IAT's methodology, software, and data analysis is a promising direction for enhancing the quality of indirect evaluation measurement. The same methodology and technology may also enhance other indirect measures of evaluation and cognitive tests related to emotion and judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research indicates narcissism can aid stress management. Nonetheless, its common perception and dissemination as socially aversive may hamper its acknowledgment and use as an asset in the context of stress. This experimental study investigated the effects of receiving positive or negative information (i.e., prompts) about narcissism in the context of stress on attitudes towards this trait's association with stress. It also assessed individuals' experiences of narcissism's stress-coping properties when one believes themselves to be a high narcissism scorer, via an online survey. Hundred and five adults ( M age = 32.0; 22–64 years) completed measures of state-stress, music preferences, and narcissism. They were then randomly assigned to either the positive or negative prompt groups, being shown information highlighting the positive or negative impact of narcissism on stress management, respectively. Participants were then informed they scored above average on narcissism, despite their actual questionnaire scores, and undertook a stress-inducing procedure. Self-reported stress, implicit and explicit attitudes were measured pre- and post-prompt presentation. Results showed that, while prompts did not influence attitudes nor stress outcomes, individuals displayed neutral implicit attitudes towards narcissism's association with stress across measurement timepoints. These findings suggest that people's attitudes towards narcissism in the context of stress have not been deteriorated by this trait's predominant negative depiction outside this context. Therefore, the dissemination and establishment of narcissism as an asset for stress-coping may be received by the general population with less resistance than anticipated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attitudes toward people with disabilities tend to be negative, regardless of the visibility of the disorder traits. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience stigmatization that is rooted in negative attitudes or prejudice toward them because of their social awkwardness. The neural underpinnings of attitudes toward people with disabilities remain unclear. In this study, we focused on implicit attitudes toward people with ASD and physical disabilities, which are more visible than ASD, and investigated whether implicit attitudes were predicted by using neural activity with multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) in the prejudice network. Thirty-six, right-handed, Japanese, university students without disabilities participated. Two implicit association tests (IAT) toward people with ASD and physical disabilities revealed negative implicit attitudes. In the MRI scanner, participants performed a one-back task by using the same picture sets of IATs to examine their neural responses toward people with ASD and physical disabilities. According to the MVPA results, activation patterns of the right amygdala and right caudate significantly predicted implicit attitudes toward people with ASD and physical disabilities, respectively. These results suggest that implicit attitudes toward ASD and physical disabilities can be predicted by using neural signals from different regions within the prejudice network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the social perceptions of the voiced velar fricative (ghekanye) in the city of Voronezh, Russia. The voice velar fricative in place of the standard voiced velar stop (non-gyekanye) is a prominent linguistic feature found throughout Southern Russian. A matched-guise test was used in which respondents listened to a series of recorded audio stimuli and then evaluated the audio recordings in 18 different attributes. I analyze with open-ended questions the qualitative data of the respondents to uncover explicit attitudes about the phenomenon. The results show that Voronezh residents hold negative implicit attitudes toward the voiced velar fricative which manifest in negatively evaluated status-related attributes, while the explicit attitudes are not as clear-cut. This study provides further evidence for linguistic stigmatization and supports the claim that linguistic ideologies reinforce negative attitudes towards ghekanye and create perceptions of ghekanye as insufficiently intelligent and incompetent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sports have traditionally had gendered connotations in society and culture, resulting in solidified gender stereotypes that influence impression evaluations. China has a special gender social culture; however, how sport–gender stereotypes (SGS) influence the gender evaluation of people in China in the Global South is still unknown. This study obtained gender-typed sports and attribute adjectives and proved the existence of SGS through a pilot study (392 college students, n1 = 207, n2 = 185) and then used two studies to explore the influence of both explicit and implicit SGS on evaluations and compared the differences between these stereotypes and general gender stereotypes. Study 1 (395 college students, n1a = 192, n1b = 203) examined the explicit level using a questionnaire experiment. The results of two experiments showed that (1) stereotype-consistent targets were more masculine or feminine in correspondence with their gender, while stereotype-inconsistent targets had higher anti-gender traits; and (2) the inclusion of stereotype-consistent sports activities led targets to be evaluated as more masculine, while stereotype-inconsistent sport activities showed gender evaluation reversal, especially for women. Study 2 (103 college students, n2a = 61, n2b = 42) measured the implicit attitudes using the Implicit Association Test. The results of two experiments showed that (1) implicit evaluations of stereotype-consistent targets were associated faster than stereotype-inconsistent targets and (2) the inclusion of gender-typed sports weakened implicit gender evaluations. In conclusion, this is the first quantitative study to explore the unique effect of SGS on individual evaluations and how they differ from general gender stereotypes in the Chinese context. These findings could provide valuable insights for research and the application of sports social science and physical education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that instead of primarily paying attention to the nature of implicit attitudes that are taken to cause implicit discrimination, we should investigate how discrimination can be implicit in itself. I propose to characterize implicit discrimination as unintentional discrimination: the person responds to facts unintentionally and often unconsciously which are, given their end, irrelevant and imply unfair treatment. The result is a unified account of implicit bias that allows for the different ways in which it can display itself and can be explained. Furthermore, the view can account for the central characteristics of implicit bias: (1) that it is, for a variety of reasons, difficult to control, (2) that we are not necessarily unconscious of implicit bias but not properly conscious either, and (3) that we can unintentionally discriminate regardless of whether we claim to care about fairness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: According to major cognitive accounts of panic disorder, bodily sensations can lead to automatic activation of an associative fear network, potentially triggering a cascade of cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses culminating in a panic attack. However, the evidence for the automatic associations assumed by these models is mixed. This may reflect the heterogeneous nature of panic disorder, in that the relative importance of different bodily sensations and symptoms varies between individuals. The current study aimed to test this possibility via measuring the associations between three different sets of panic symptoms (cognitive, respiratory, cardiac) and scores on three symptom-specific single target implicit association tests (STIATs). Methods: A total of 226 unselected female participants aged 18–35 completed the STIATs as well as questionnaires assessing panic symptoms and related measures in a web-based study. Results: Only limited evidence was found to support the idea of specific associations between STIAT stimuli sets and their related panic symptoms. Exploratory analyses indicated that there were only associations between STIAT scores and panic-relevant questionnaires amongst those participants who had experienced a panic attack in the previous 6 months. Conclusions: The results have implications for measuring panic-relevant associations and understanding their role in panic disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Peer victimization is linked to social anxiety (SA), and rates of bullying are significantly higher for individuals at higher weights. However, research has yet to examine whether implicit weight bias exacerbates this link. Methods: This study examined the relationships between body mass index (BMI), SA, and implicit weight bias in undergraduate women (N = 186; 54.8% White; MBMI = 25.97). Participants completed questionnaires pertaining to SA, stigmatizing attitudes toward weight, and two implicit association tests (IATs) used to measure anti-fat attitudes. IATs required categorization of words into attribute category pairs good vs. bad and motivated vs. lazy. Results: BMI and SA were not significantly related. Implicit weight bias assessed by the good/bad IAT moderated the relationship between BMI and SA. Implicit weight bias assessed by the lazy/motivated IAT moderated the relationship between BMI and SA at the trend level (p =.06). Higher BMI was associated with higher SA in individuals with high, but not low, implicit weight bias. Implicit weight bias was associated with internalization of the thin ideal but not explicit weight bias. Conclusions: Therapeutic interventions for SA among individuals with high BMI should explore internalized weight stigma, which may take the form of implicit attitudes or beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, there has been a great deal of confusion in the literature regarding cross-cultural differences in attitudes towards artificial agents and preferences for their physical appearance. Previous studies have almost exclusively assessed attitudes using self-report measures (i.e., questionnaires). In the present study, we sought to expand our knowledge on the influence of cultural background on explicit and implicit attitudes towards robots and avatars. Using the Negative Attitudes Towards Robots Scale and the Implicit Association Test in a Japanese and Dutch sample, we investigated the effect of culture and robots' body types on explicit and implicit attitudes across two experiments (total n = 669). Partly overlapping with our hypothesis, we found that Japanese individuals had a more positive explicit attitude towards robots compared to Dutch individuals, but no evidence of such a difference was found at the implicit level. As predicted, the implicit preference towards humans was moderate in both cultural groups, but in contrast to what we expected, neither culture nor robot embodiment influenced this preference. These results suggest that only at the explicit but not implicit level, cultural differences appear in attitudes towards robots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to examine the influence of emotional media information on information-processing mechanisms in the current post-truth era. A cognitive conflict monitoring and evaluation (CCME) model was proposed to explore news audiences' attention and implicit attitudes. The study had a 2 (information type, emotional vs. neutral) × 2 (condition, compatible vs. incompatible) × 3 (electrode position: Fz vs. Cz vs. Pz) design, and an implicit association test (IAT) was administered, with event-related potential (ERP) data collected. The results revealed that emotional information evoked different information-processing mechanisms than neutral information. First, in the early conflict-monitoring stage, emotional information altered arousal, and more attentional resources were allocated to semantic processing. Second, in the late evaluation stage, the lack of attentional resources (due to prior allocation) reduced the late-stage evaluation of the target stimuli by participants. Thus, in this post-truth era, attentional resources may be exhausted by processing emotional information in unnecessary media cues irrelevant to facts, inducing early cognitive conflict and prolonged late-stage evaluation of news articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Race is a social construct that contributes to group membership and heightens emotional arousal in intergroup contexts. Little is known about how emotional arousal, specifically uncertain threat, influences behavior and brain processes in response to race information. We investigated the effects of experimentally manipulated uncertain threat on impulsive actions to Black versus White faces in a community sample (n = 106) of Black and White adults. While undergoing fMRI, participants performed an emotional go/no-go task under three conditions of uncertainty: 1) anticipation of an uncertain threat (i.e., unpredictable loud aversive sound); 2) anticipation of an uncertain reward (i.e., unpredictable receipt of money); and 3) no anticipation of an uncertain event. Representational similarity analysis was used to examine the neural representations of race information across functional brain networks between conditions of uncertainty. Participants—regardless of their own race—showed greater impulsivity and neural dissimilarity in response to Black versus White faces across all functional brain networks in conditions of uncertain threat relative to other conditions. This pattern of greater neural dissimilarity under threat was enhanced in individuals with high implicit racial bias. Our results illustrate the distinct and important influence of uncertain threat on global differentiation in how race information is represented in the brain, which may contribute to racially biased behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alcohol and sexual arousal are contextual determinants of condomless sex. Dual-process theory postulates that two types of cognitive processing contribute to the regulation of behavior: one that is fast, intuitive and automatic, and another that is slower and deliberative. This study applied a dual-process model to investigate condomless sexual behavior, highlighting the potential importance of implicit attitudes in condomless sex. We investigated whether the impact of alcohol and sexual arousal on condom use-related attitudes and intentions was explained by diminished working memory capacity, as dual-process models suggest. We also investigated whether this effect could be explained by implicit and explicit attitudes toward condom use. Male participants (N = 30) were randomized using a 2 × 2 within-subjects design that manipulated alcohol intoxication (placebo vs. alcohol beverages) and sexual arousal (neutral vs. erotic movie clips). We measured participants' working memory capacity, intentions to use a condom, and explicit and implicit attitudes toward condom use. Significant main effects of alcohol intoxication and sexual arousal on working memory capacity were found. No significant interaction was found for the combined effect of alcohol intoxication and sexual arousal on intentions to use a condom. There was no significant effect of implicit attitudes on intentions to use a condom, although a trend toward significance (p = 0.06) was found for the effect of implicit attitudes on intentions to use a condom when participants were in a state of alcohol intoxication. Theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to better engage individuals in the progress of carbon neutrality, public attitude toward the issue of climate change is a fundamental question. In recent decades, burgeoning research has implied the distinctive effect of implicit attitude on behaviors from explicit attitude. However, the majority of research on attitudes toward climate change has focused on explicit attitude. This research fills this gap by exploring individuals' implicit attitudes toward climate change in two aspects—overall evaluation (positive or negative) and attribution of (anthropogenic or natural progress) climate change, which are among the most concerned dimensions in the study of individuals' attitudes toward climate change, and we compared implicit attitudes with explicit attitudes in these two dimensions. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) and its modification, the Single Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT), were applied to measure implicit attitudes. Our results show that participants implicitly think of climate change as human-induced, corresponding with explicit attitudes; however, they express indifference to climate change as manifested by neutral implicit evaluation, contrary to the negative evaluation in the explicit attitude test. This indifferent implicit attitude should inspire policymakers to focus not only on regular knowledge communication but also on an emotional and personal way to induce true concern for climate change amongst the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, researchers across the social sciences have sought to document and explain the worldwide variation in social group attitudes (evaluative representations, e.g., young–good/old–bad) and stereotypes (attribute representations, e.g., male–science/female–arts). Indeed, uncovering such country-level variation can provide key insights into questions ranging from how attitudes and stereotypes are clustered across places to why places vary in attitudes and stereotypes (including ecological and social correlates). Here, we introduce the Project Implicit:International (PI:International) dataset that has the potential to propel such research by offering the first cross-country dataset of both implicit (indirectly measured) and explicit (directly measured) attitudes and stereotypes across multiple topics and years. PI:International comprises 2.3 million tests for seven topics (race, sexual orientation, age, body weight, nationality, and skin-tone attitudes, as well as men/women–science/arts stereotypes) using both indirect (Implicit Association Test; IAT) and direct (self-report) measures collected continuously from 2009 to 2019 from 34 countries in each country's native language(s). We show that the IAT data from PI:International have adequate internal consistency (split-half reliability), convergent validity (implicit–explicit correlations), and known groups validity. Given such reliability and validity, we summarize basic descriptive statistics on the overall strength and variability of implicit and explicit attitudes and stereotypes around the world. The PI:International dataset, including both summary data and trial-level data from the IAT, is provided openly to facilitate wide access and novel discoveries on the global nature of implicit and explicit attitudes and stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has provided evidence that teachers implicitly hold more negative attitudes toward ethnic minority students than toward ethnic majority students. Furthermore, they attribute the lower educational success of ethnic minority students predominantly to internal causes. So far, it is not known how implicit attitudes and causal attributions are related to preservice teachers' judgments of students' academic competencies. We conducted a study to close this research gap. In a sample of preservice teachers, our study showed mainly negative implicit attitudes toward ethnic minority students. On general, the preservice teachers made external attributions. Implicit attitudes as well as causal attributions predicted the judgments. Preservice teachers with more negative attitudes and preservice teachers, who attributed the failure of ethnic minority students to these students' abilities, less favorably judged the competence of ethnic minority students. Our results highlight the role of teachers' attitudes and causal attributions in determining the disadvantages that ethnic minority students experience in school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophical arguments often assume that the folk tends towards moral objectivism. Although recent psychological studies have indicated that lay persons' attitudes to morality are best characterized in terms of non-objectivism-leaning pluralism, it has been maintained that the folk may be committed to moral objectivism implicitly. Since the studies conducted so far almost exclusively assessed subjects' metaethical attitudes via explicit cognitions, the strength of this rebuttal remains unclear. The current study attempts to test the folk's implicit metaethical commitments. We present results of a newly developed Implicit Association Test (IAT) for metaethical attitudes which indicate that the folk generally tend towards moral non-objectivism on the implicit level as well. We discuss implications of this finding for the philosophical debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a new argument for epistemic permissivism. The version of permissivism that we defend is a moderate version that applies only to explicit doxastic attitudes. Drawing on Yalcin's framework for modeling such attitudes, we argue that two fully rational subjects who share all their evidence, prior beliefs, and epistemic standards may still differ in the explicit doxastic attitudes that they adopt. This can happen because two such subjects may be sensitive to different questions. Thus, differing intellectual interests can yield failures of uniqueness. This is not a merely pragmatic phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When facing socially sensitive issues, people do not often express their real attitudes because of social pressure. The model of dual attitudes is one of the theories that try to explain the phenomenon. According to the theory, the classification of separation patterns between the two attitudes: suppression, independence, motivated override, and automatic override. Recent studies have presented these types of separations in two attitudes indirectly, but direct experimental evidence still is demanded in social attitude research. The present research tries to give such direct evidence and accordingly designs two studies to identify the four kinds of separations above. In the first study, we examine the relationship of the independent and repressed between implicit attitudes and explicit attitudes with cognitive fatigues. In the second study, we consider the rest two types, the motivated and automatic overridden. This paper proposes an experimental design to test attitude duality and explore the deep psychological mechanisms of how cognitive resources and levels of social pressures affect people's social attitudes and behaviors, which can explain the phenomena associated with attitude dissociation, and the analysis of experimental results suggests that dual attitude theory is better than other models to explain this effect in simple and clarity way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a correction notice for an article titled "Differences in need-supportive teaching toward students from different socioeconomic backgrounds and the role of teachers' attitudes" published in the journal Social Psychology of Education. The notice highlights several mistakes in the original article, including errors in referencing, inconsistencies in a table, and a typo in a hypothesis. The publisher apologizes for any inconvenience caused. The article can be accessed online for further information. [Extracted from the article]

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused enormous societal upheaval globally. In the US, beyond the devastating toll on life and health, it triggered an economic shock unseen since the great depression and laid bare preexisting societal inequities. The full impacts of these personal, social, economic, and public-health challenges will not be known for years. To minimize societal costs and ensure future preparedness, it is critical to record the psychological and social experiences of individuals during such periods of high societal volatility. Here, we introduce, describe, and assess the COVID-Dynamic dataset, a within-participant longitudinal study conducted from April 2020 through January 2021, that captures the COVID-19 pandemic experiences of >1000 US residents. Each of 16 timepoints combines standard psychological assessments with novel surveys of emotion, social/political/moral attitudes, COVID-19-related behaviors, tasks assessing implicit attitudes and social decision-making, and external data to contextualize participants' responses. This dataset is a resource for researchers interested in COVID-19-specific questions and basic psychological phenomena, as well as clinicians and policy-makers looking to mitigate the effects of future calamities. Measurement(s) Mental and Physical Health, Behavior, Personality, Emotion, Racial and Political Attitudes (Implicit and Explicit), Social and Moral Decision-Making, Demographics Technology Type(s) Questionnaires and Choice Tasks Factor Type(s) none Sample Characteristic - Organism Adult Humans Sample Characteristic - Environment Online Survey Sample Characteristic - Location United States of America [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the prominent questions in flow research is the investigation of conditions that need to be met so that people will get involved in an activity for the sheer sake of doing it. The present study examined the relationship between distal (i.e., implicit motives) and proximal (i.e., affective preferences, cognitive preferences, perceived abilities) motivational processes and flow experience based on assumptions of the compensatory model of motivation and volition. In order to arouse the implicit agentic motive, 63 participants worked on an online platform in an open innovation environment. Results showed that affective preferences mediated the effect of the implicit agentic motive on flow experience. Moreover, a hierarchical regression analysis with simple slope tests yielded that, at the proximal level, the congruence of affective preferences, cognitive preferences, and perceived abilities was associated with flow experience. The present research adds some new and essential ingredients to Csikszentmihalyis' traditional conception of flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although faces of in-group members are generally thought to be processed holistically, there are mixed findings on whether holistic processing remains robust for faces of out-group members and what factors contribute to holistic processing of out-group faces. This study examined how implicit social bias, experience with out-group members, and ability to process in-group faces holistically might predict the magnitude of holistic processing for faces of two out-groups: other-race and other-age groups. In Experiment 1, Caucasian participants viewed Caucasian (own-race) and East Asian (other-race) faces. In Experiment 2, young adult participants viewed young adult (own-age) and baby (other-age) faces. Each participant completed a composite task with in-group and out-group faces, an implicit association test, and questionnaires about their experience with in-group and out-group members. We found that while the participants had relatively extensive experience with the other-race group, they had limited experience with the other-age group. Nonetheless, implicit social bias was found to positively predict the magnitude of holistic processing for both other-race and other-age faces. Exploratory analyses on the interactions among the predictors suggest that the effect of implicit social bias was primarily observed in participants with strong holistic processing ability of in-group faces but with low level of experience with members of the out-groups. These findings suggest that observers utilize different kinds of information when processing out-group faces, and that social features, such as race or age, are incorporated to influence how out-group faces are processed efficiently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One important strategy for dealing with error in our methods is triangulation, or the use multiple methods to investigate the same object. Current accounts of triangulation assume that its primary function is to provide a confirmatory boost to hypotheses beyond what confirmation of each method alone could produce. Yet, researchers often use multiple methods to examine new constructs about which they are uncertain. For example, social psychologists use multiple indirect measures to provide convergent evidence about implicit attitudes, but how to characterize implicit attitudes is an open question. To make sense of triangulation under uncertainty about constructs, I suggest two changes: first, triangulation can serve multiple epistemic functions, including some that are non-confirmatory, and second, researchers should assess the epistemic risk in claims about evidence and the acceptance/rejection of hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shortly after research regarding the sexual double standard began, mixed results were found, which may be due to inconsistent methodology and outdated definitions of the concept. Studies often use explicit or self-report measures to assess the endorsement of a sexual double standard. Some of these approaches are not only influenced by social desirability, but they may also not be able to fully capture a sexual double standard. This study addressed the endorsement of the sexual double standard using an implicit association test (IAT) and a sexual double standard self-report scale. Additionally, sociosexuality was used to measure openness to casual sex as a moderator variable. The sample included 209 Portuguese heterosexual cisgender young adults (112 women and 97 men, Mage 23.75). Both men and women showed low endorsement of an explicit sexual double standard. However, the IAT revealed women to strongly adhere to an implicit reverse sexual double standard, while men showed very minor endorsement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with an immigrant background can be affected by stereotypes and discrimination. As adolescence is an important developmental stage, this study investigated whether adolescents hold (negative) implicit attitudes towards people with Turkish immigrant background and whether adolescents differ in the extent of attitudes. Additionally, the relevance of perceived discrimination, identification with culture of residence, motivation to act without predjudice, and quality and quantity of contact to people with Turkish immigrant background for the extent of implicit attitudes was analysed. Analyses are based on 244 adolescents (60.7% female, 1.6% diverse; 13.1% with Turkish immigrant background, 16.8% with immigrant background other than Turkish) who participated in an online study. An implicit association test revealed that negative implicit attitudes towards people with a Turkish immigrant background were present among adolescents. Unlike adolescents with a Turkish immigrant background, adolescents without immigrant background and with immigrant background other than Turkish hold negative implicit attitudes on average. For the total sample, it was found that low perceived discrimination was related to negative implicit attitudes. The results are discussed with respect to substantive and methodological aspects. Implications for research and practice are derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visually recognising one's own body is important both for controlling movement and for one's sense of self. Twenty previous studies asked healthy adults to make rapid recognition judgements about photographs of their own and other peoples' hands. Some of these judgements involved explicit self-recognition: "Is this your hand or another person's?" while others assessed self-recognition implicitly, comparing performance for self and other hands in tasks unrelated to self-other discrimination (e.g., left-versus-right; match-to-sample). We report five experiments with three groups of participants performing left-versus-right (Experiment 1) and self-versus-other discrimination tasks (Experiments 2 to 5). No evidence was found for better performance with self than with other stimuli, but some evidence was found for a self-disadvantage in the explicit task. Manipulating stimulus duration as a proxy for task difficulty revealed strong response biases in the explicit self-recognition task. Rather than discriminating between self and other stimuli, participants seem to treat self-other discrimination tasks as self-detection tasks, raising their criterion and consistently responding 'not me' when the task is difficult. A meta-analysis of 21 studies revealed no overall self-advantage, and suggested a publication bias for reports showing self-advantages in implicit tasks. Although this may appear counter-intuitive, we suggest that there may be no self-advantage in hand recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have revealed that stereotyping processes involving negative affective content (e.g., antipathy) can lead to a significant increase in insula activity. However, whether the insula is sensitive to stereotype inconsistency or plays a crucial role in stereotype regulation remains unclear. To help fill this gap, 21 young adults were presented with a modified single-category implicit association test (SC-IAT) that assessed their stereotypes about rural migrant workers. In a within-subjects design, participants completed separate blocks of compatible and incompatible trials, each of which consisted of stereotype-consistent or stereotype-inconsistent trait labels that had a positive or a negative valence. Functional MRI was used to identify specific brain regions associated with negative and positive stereotyping. The behavioral results revealed a typical stereotype regulation effect in which participants responded slower to stereotype-inconsistent condition than stereotype-consistent condition, although such effect was significantly modulated by IAT compatibility, rather than by emotional valence. MRI results revealed that activity in the right insula was significantly sensitive to stereotype regulation processes in negative incompatible tasks, whereas such effect was marginally significant in positive incompatible tasks. Moreover, psychophysiological interaction analyses indicated complex functional connectivity among the right insula and cognitive control regions [e.g., ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC)], social mentalizing regions [medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)], and motivation regions (putamen) in the condition where negative stereotypes were violated. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that the right insula serves as a crucial node in regulating implicit stereotyping, particularly in negative stereotyping tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A longitudinal science intervention with students from ethnic-racial underrepresented groups in an urban area examined the roles of intervention participation and STEM relationships in implicit and explicit science identity and attitudes and social belonging. Across a four-week geoscience program, Black, Latinx, and Native American/Alaskan Native (87.5%) students (N = 97; Mage = 15.27; female = 44%) from low socio-economic backgrounds engaged in hands-on activities, field trips, group projects, and listened to diverse speakers. During the intervention, students had the opportunity to form relationships with teachers and near-peer mentors (undergraduate STEM students). Participants exhibited increases in positive explicit and implicit science attitudes, identity, and social belonging. Also, psychosocial support from teachers and near-peer mentors developed over time, but near-peer mentorship uniquely explained changes in science identity and social belonging. Positive changes in implicit and explicit attitudes and explicit science identity were further qualified by past academic performance—only low, compared to high, achieving students benefited the most from the intervention. The present intervention provides evidence that immersing ethnic-racial minority high school students in an engaging science program with supportive STEM relationships promotes science-based cognitions that have implications for persistence in STEM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in unintended discrimination that can result from implicit attitudes and stereotypes (implicit biases) has stimulated many research investigations. Much of this research has used the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure association strengths that are presumed to underlie implicit biases. It had been more than a decade since the last published treatment of recommended best practices for research using IAT measures. After an initial draft by the first author, and continuing through three subsequent drafts, the 22 authors and 14 commenters contributed extensively to refining the selection and description of recommendation-worthy research practices. Individual judgments of agreement or disagreement were provided by 29 of the 36 authors and commenters. Of the 21 recommended practices for conducting research with IAT measures presented in this article, all but two were endorsed by 90% or more of those who felt knowledgeable enough to express agreement or disagreement; only 4% of the totality of judgments expressed disagreement. For two practices that were retained despite more than two judgments of disagreement (four for one, five for the other), the bases for those disagreements are described in presenting the recommendations. The article additionally provides recommendations for how to report procedures of IAT measures in empirical articles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The feasibility of implicitly assessing medical student burnout was explored, using the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP), to measure longitudinal student burnout over the first two years of medical school and directly comparing it with an existing explicit measure of burnout (Maslach Burnout Inventory; MBI). Three successive cohorts of medical students completed both implicit and explicit measures of burnout at several time points during their first two years of medical school. Both assessments were conducted via the internet within a one-week period during the first week of medical school, the end of the first year of medical school, and the end of the second year, though not all cohorts were able to complete the assessments at all time points. Mixed linear models were used to compare the two measures directly, as well as to evaluate changes over time in each measure separately. Minimal correspondence was observed between the implicit and explicit measures of burnout on a within-subject basis. However, when analyzed separately, all subscales of both measures detected significant change over time in the direction of greater levels of burnout, particularly during the first year of medical school. These results provide preliminary evidence the IRAP is able to assess implicit attitudes related to burnout among medical students, though additional research is needed. The IRAP detected consistent improvements in positive implicit attitudes toward medical training during students' second year of medical school, which was not detected by the MBI. Possible implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Theoretical models emphasize the importance of implicit self-related weight attitudes for the maintenance of body dissatisfaction. Even though body dissatisfaction is increased in obesity, only general implicit weight-related attitudes have been investigated so far. Therefore, the present study assessed self-related and general implicit weight attitudes and their relation to food. Methods: Women with overweight and obesity (OW; n = 71) and women with normal weight (NW; n = 44) completed three implicit tasks to (1) assess attitudes towards persons with normal weight and overweight in general, (2) attitudes towards one's own body, and (3) the association between one's own body and food. Results: While both groups showed an implicit preference towards persons with normal weight relative to persons with overweight, only women with OW showed a significantly stronger negative implicit attitude towards their own body and a stronger association between food and one's own body. Additionally, self-related and not general implicit weight attitudes correlated significantly with body dissatisfaction and eating pathology. Conclusions: The results highlight the importance of self-related implicit attitudes and their relation to body dissatisfaction and eating pathology in women with overweight and obesity. Targeting these self-related implicit weight attitudes might help to improve obesity treatments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Implicit and explicit attitudes influence our behavior. Accordingly, it was the main goal of the paper to investigate if those attitudes are related to body image satisfaction. 134 young women between 18 and 34 years completed an explicit affective rating and an implicit affective priming task with pictures of women with different BMIs. Because it is well known that mindfulness, self-compassion and social media activity influence body image satisfaction, these variables were registered as well. The results confirmed an explicit positive affective bias toward pictures of slim women and a negative bias toward emaciated and obese body pictures. It adds to the literature that the explicit positive bias does not hold true for the strongest form of underweight, suggesting that instead of dividing different body shapes into two groups, different gradings of under- and overweight should be considered. Concerning the affective priming task, no significant differences between the different pictures could be carved out. Implicit and explicit affective attitudes were not related to the body satisfaction of the participating women. In line with former studies, body satisfaction was predicted by the actual-ideal weight discrepancy, the BMI, aspects of mindfulness and self-compassion. This study indicates that implicit and explicit affective attitudes toward underweight and overweight women are unrelated to the participants' body satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychometric characteristics were investigated of an Implicit Association Test to assess implicit endorsement of the sexual double standard (SDS-IAT) in emerging adults. The reliability of the SDS-IAT was investigated focusing on internal consistency across different phases of the test. Convergent validity of the SDS-IAT was evaluated against the Scale for the Assessment of Sexual Standards in Youth, an explicit measure of SDS, and against gender investment. Divergent validity was evaluated against the personality characteristics of extraversion, neuroticism, and social desirability proneness. Gendered patterns were examined. Attenuation-corrected alphas demonstrated acceptable internal consistency, with alphas ranging for.65–.70. A modest level of explicit SDS endorsement was found in both female and male participants. In line with their explicit SDS level, a modest level of implicit SDS endorsement was found in male participants, whereas a reverse implicit SDS was found among young women. In agreement with our theoretical expectations, we found low convergent validity in multitrait-multimethod analysis of the SDS-IAT with a measure of explicit SDS endorsement, and with general level of investment in gender ideals. Similarly, divergent validity analysis revealed absence of significant correlations with the conceptually unrelated concepts of extraversion, neuroticism, and social desirability proneness, except for extraversion in female participants. The present findings suggest that implicit SDS endorsement can be assessed using the SDS-IAT. The finding that explicit and implicit SDS approvals differ in young female participants, while they align in young male participants, warrants further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers' attitudes towards common disorders such as ADHD and anxiety are important to investigate, given that teachers play a significant role in the lives of young children. Implicit attitudes have not previously been investigated in this area. The current research aimed to explore teachers' implicit and explicit gender-biased attitudes towards children with ADHD and anxiety. The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) was used to measure implicit bias, and results were analyzed in relation to explicit measures. Results indicated that teachers (N = 38) showed implicit and explicit gender biases, however there were no significant relationships between the implicit and explicit measures. The research adds to the small pool of existing literature on the topic and has potential implications regarding teachers' understanding of ADHD and anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temporal Focus Hypothesis (TFH) proposes that people's implicit space-time mappings are shaped by their attentional focus on temporal events. We used this hypothesis to examine predictions made by psychologists who suggest that the conservatives tend to endorse tradition and are more past-focused while liberals prefer progressive change and are more future-focused. In line with these predictions, we found that the conservatives, who showed more agreement with past-focused statements, were more likely to conceptualize the past as in front of them, whereas liberals, who showed more agreement with future-focused statements, were more likely to conceptualize the future as in front of them. Our results shed new light on the TFH and reveal a relationship between political attitude and implicit space-time mappings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Theory suggests that implicit beliefs are more likely to be associated with spontaneous, impulsive health behaviors (e.g., smoking, snacking), while controlled, consciously accessible beliefs are more likely to be associated with behaviors that require deliberation and reasoned decision-making (e.g., physical activity, healthy food selection). Consistent with these predictions, we proposed that as behaviors become habitual, they require less deliberation to enact and are thus more likely to be controlled by non-conscious processes, as indicated by stronger associations with implicit beliefs. The present study tested the moderating effect of habit on the effects of implicit beliefs on two health behaviors. Method: Two samples of university students completed measures of attitude, habit, and implicit beliefs for free-sugar intake (sample 1) and heavy episodic drinking (sample 2) at an initial time point, with follow-up behavioral measures taken at 2 and 4 weeks later, respectively. Results: Path analyses indicated that attitude and habit predicted behavior in both samples, and habit moderated the implicit belief-behavior relationship in both samples. The effect of implicit beliefs on behavior was larger among participants reporting strong habits. Implicit beliefs did not moderate the effect of explicit attitudes on behavior. Conclusion: Findings provide preliminary evidence that experiencing health behaviors as habitual is associated with a stronger implicit beliefs-health behavior relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research has found that implicit associations between Black male faces and aggression affect dispositional judgments and decision-making, but there have been few investigations into downstream effects on explicit episodic memory. The current experiment tested whether such implicit associations interact with explicit recognition memory using an associative memory paradigm in younger and older adults. Participants studied image pairs featuring faces (of Black or White males) alongside handheld objects (uncategorized, kitchenware, or weapons) and later were tested on their recognition memory for faces, objects, and face/object pairings. Younger adults were further divided into full and divided attention encoding groups. All participants then took the race faces implicit association test. Memory for image pairs was poorer than memory for individual face or object images, particularly among older adults, extending the empirical support for the age-related associative memory deficit hypothesis (Naveh-Benjamin in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cognit 26:1170–1187, 2000) to associations between racial faces and objects. Our primary hypothesis—that older adults' associative memory deficit would be reduced under Black/weapon pairings due to their being schematically related stimuli—was not confirmed. Younger adults and especially older ones, who were predominantly White, exhibited an own-race recognition bias. In addition, older adults showed more negative implicit bias toward Black faces. Importantly, mixed linear analyses revealed that negative implicit associations for Black faces predicted increased explicit associative memory false alarm rates among older adults. Such a pattern may have implications for the criminal justice system, particularly when weighting eyewitness testimony from older adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The differential activation hypothesis (Teasdale & Dent, 1987) proposes that negative cognitions in individuals with a history of depression are activated more easily by negative mood than individuals without this history. The change of cognitions due to mood change was termed cognitive reactivity. Negative cognitions might exist on both explicit and implicit dimensions. Methods: This study examined the differential activation hypothesis on coping-related cognitions among people with a history of depression under different mood states in comparison with people who are currently depressed and those who have no history of depression. Coping-related cognitions were examined on both explicit and implicit dimensions. Currently depressed (n = 42), previously depressed (n = 61), and never depressed (n = 62) participants were tested on computer-based paradigms designed to measure depression, mood, and explicit and implicit cognitions. Results: Explicit negatively biased cognitions on coping existed among currently depressed individuals and to some extent among previously depressed individuals. Explicit cognitive reactivity existed among previously depressed individuals for emotional-related content. Implicit cognitive compensation tendency existed among currently depressed individuals on negative coping while implicit cognitive reactivity existed among previously depressed individuals on positive coping. Conclusions: This study demonstrated the existence of negatively biased cognitions and cognitive reactivity among people with a history of depression with coping-related contents, and on both explicit and implicit dimensions. The findings are consistent with the differential activation hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is one of the most popular measures in psychological research. A lack of standardization across IATs has resulted in significant variability among stimuli used by researchers, including the positive and negative words used in evaluative IATs. Does the variability in attribute words in evaluative IATs produce unwanted variability in measurement quality across studies? The present work investigated the effect of evaluative stimuli across three studies using 13 IATs and over 60,000 participants. The 64 positive and negative words that we tested provided similar measurement quality. Further, measurement was satisfactory even in IATs that used only category labels as stimuli. These results suggest that common sense is probably a sufficient method for selection of evaluative stimuli in the IAT. For reasonable measurement quality, we recommend that researchers using evaluative IATs in English select words randomly from the set we tested in the present research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in the enforcement of national public health safety measures including precautionary behaviours such as border closures, movement restrictions, total or partial lockdowns, social distancing, and face mask mandates in order to reduce the spread of this disease. The current study uses affective priming, an indirect behavioural measure of implicit attitude, to evaluate COVID-19 attitudes. Explicitly, participants rated their overall risk perception associated with contracting COVID-19 significantly lower compared to their perception of necessary precautions and overall adherence to public health measures. During baseline trials, participants explicitly rated COVID-19 affiliated words as unpleasant, similar to traditional unpleasant word stimuli. Despite rating the COVID-19 affiliated words as unpleasant, affective priming was not observed for congruent prime-target COVID-19 affiliated word pairs when compared to congruent prime-target pleasant and unpleasant words. Overall, these results provide quantitative evidence that COVID-19 affiliated words do not invoke the same implicit attitude response as traditional pleasant and unpleasant word stimuli, despite conscious explicit rating of the COVID-19 words as unpleasant. This reduction in unpleasant attitude towards COVID-19 related words may contribute towards decreased fear-related behaviours and increased incidences of risky-behaviour facilitating the movement of the virus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]