Research Overview
Manuscript reprints and data are available at my page on the Open Science Framework. My vita is available here.
People don’t always say what’s on their minds. One reason is that they are unwilling. For example, someone might not report that they dislike members of a particular group because it is not socially acceptable to do so. Another reason is that they are unable. For example, someone might truly believe that they are fair-minded but not realize that they harbor negative stereotypes. The difference between being unwilling and unable is the difference between purposely hiding something from someone and unknowingly hiding something from yourself.
I am interested in these attitudes that people are unwilling or unable to report, and my research investigates how such implicit attitudes form and how they affect our behavior. Much of my research focuses on prejudice and stereotyping, but I am also working with my students to understand the role of implicit attitudes in a wide variety of domains such as identification with feminism, health decision-making, environmental concern, and moral reasoning.
People don’t always say what’s on their minds. One reason is that they are unwilling. For example, someone might not report that they dislike members of a particular group because it is not socially acceptable to do so. Another reason is that they are unable. For example, someone might truly believe that they are fair-minded but not realize that they harbor negative stereotypes. The difference between being unwilling and unable is the difference between purposely hiding something from someone and unknowingly hiding something from yourself.
I am interested in these attitudes that people are unwilling or unable to report, and my research investigates how such implicit attitudes form and how they affect our behavior. Much of my research focuses on prejudice and stereotyping, but I am also working with my students to understand the role of implicit attitudes in a wide variety of domains such as identification with feminism, health decision-making, environmental concern, and moral reasoning.
Incomplete List of Ongoing Projects
Attitude Transfer Effects in Impression Formation
An obvious source of attitudes is direct, first-hand experience. For example, I might like a new band after listening to their album or seeing them in concert. It is less intuitive that I might have a favorable impression of the new band without ever even hearing them, simply because a good friend does. However, stimuli often take on meaning through their associations with other stimuli (Ratliff & Nosek, 2008). I investigate how people’s attitude toward individual group members influences their implicit and explicit attitudes toward other people from the same group. The most general finding from my lab is that implicit attitudes toward group members readily generalize to others in the same group (via associative links), but that explicit attitudes do not generalize because people deliberately avoid using information about one group member to judge another group member (Ratliff & Nosek, 2008; Ratliff & Nosek, 2010; Ratliff et al., 2012). I am currently investigating the mechanisms, boundary conditions, and real world application of these attitude generalization effects. For example, one moderator that influences whether attitudes will generalize from group member to group member is the type of group to which they belong. Although people are especially careful to avoid attitude generalization among outgroup members (e.g., a Black people for White participants), implicit attitudes transfer more readily between outgroup members than between ingroup members (Chen & Ratliff, 2016). Further, my research shows that attitude transfer really is “guilt-by-association” – negative attitudes transfer to a greater extent than positive attitudes do (Ratliff & Nosek, 2011).
Implicit Prototypes and Behavior
Take a moment to think about the typical environmentalist… who comes to mind? My lab examines the role implicit prototype favorability in predicting important, real-world behaviors. Prototypes are mental images of the kind of person who engages in a particular behavior or class of behaviors (e.g., the “typical environmentalist”). Previous research has demonstrated that self-reported evaluations of prototypes predict relevant behavior. Our research extends this work by demonstrating that prototype favorability influences behavior outside of conscious awareness and control. For example: (1) women with more positive implicit evaluations of the “typical person who has tan skin” are more likely to engage in risky sun behavior than are women with less positive evaluations (Howell & Ratliff, 2015), (2) women with more positive implicit evaluations of the “typical feminist” are more likely to identify with feminism than are women with less positive evaluations (Redford, Howell, Meijs, & Ratliff, 2016), and (3) people with more positive implicit evaluations of the “typical environmentalist” are more likely to engage in environmentally-friendly behavior than are people with less positive evaluations (Ratliff, Howell, & Redford, 2017).
Defensive Responding to Feedback about Implicit Attitudes
People react defensively to receiving feedback that contradicts their self-views, particularly when the feedback indicates something undesirable about them. Because egalitarianism is a cherished self-view for most Americans, we expect that learning that one harbors implicit biases should be threatening to the self, prompting defensive responding. In our initial studies, Jenny Howell and I investigated the role of implicit-explicit attitude discrepancy in defensive reactions to feedback on nine different IATs in an archival data set from the Project Implicit website (Howell & Ratliff, 2017a). People responded most defensively to feedback when: (a) their implicit and explicit attitudes were more discrepant than congruent, (b) their implicit attitudes aligned more with societal bias than did their explicit attitudes (e.g., a preference for Straight People relative to Gay People), and (c) they were majority group members (e.g., White participants in a race relevant task) rather than minority group members. Other studies in this general area of research show that: (1) the magnitude of implicit-explicit discrepancy in anti-fat attitudes predicts defensiveness more among people who think they are less biased than others (Howell & Ratliff, 2017b), and (2) explicit anti-gay bias decreased considerably, and implicit bias decreased slightly, in the last 10 years; at the same time, people are increasingly defensive about feedback suggesting bias (Howell, Ratliff, & Conway, in preparation).
Other Topics
Other ongoing research in my lab concerns: (a) people’s judgments about others’ moral responsibility for implicit attitudes, (b) attitudes toward transgender people, (c) attitudes toward white privilege, and (d) best scientific practices for producing reliable, replicable research.
An obvious source of attitudes is direct, first-hand experience. For example, I might like a new band after listening to their album or seeing them in concert. It is less intuitive that I might have a favorable impression of the new band without ever even hearing them, simply because a good friend does. However, stimuli often take on meaning through their associations with other stimuli (Ratliff & Nosek, 2008). I investigate how people’s attitude toward individual group members influences their implicit and explicit attitudes toward other people from the same group. The most general finding from my lab is that implicit attitudes toward group members readily generalize to others in the same group (via associative links), but that explicit attitudes do not generalize because people deliberately avoid using information about one group member to judge another group member (Ratliff & Nosek, 2008; Ratliff & Nosek, 2010; Ratliff et al., 2012). I am currently investigating the mechanisms, boundary conditions, and real world application of these attitude generalization effects. For example, one moderator that influences whether attitudes will generalize from group member to group member is the type of group to which they belong. Although people are especially careful to avoid attitude generalization among outgroup members (e.g., a Black people for White participants), implicit attitudes transfer more readily between outgroup members than between ingroup members (Chen & Ratliff, 2016). Further, my research shows that attitude transfer really is “guilt-by-association” – negative attitudes transfer to a greater extent than positive attitudes do (Ratliff & Nosek, 2011).
Implicit Prototypes and Behavior
Take a moment to think about the typical environmentalist… who comes to mind? My lab examines the role implicit prototype favorability in predicting important, real-world behaviors. Prototypes are mental images of the kind of person who engages in a particular behavior or class of behaviors (e.g., the “typical environmentalist”). Previous research has demonstrated that self-reported evaluations of prototypes predict relevant behavior. Our research extends this work by demonstrating that prototype favorability influences behavior outside of conscious awareness and control. For example: (1) women with more positive implicit evaluations of the “typical person who has tan skin” are more likely to engage in risky sun behavior than are women with less positive evaluations (Howell & Ratliff, 2015), (2) women with more positive implicit evaluations of the “typical feminist” are more likely to identify with feminism than are women with less positive evaluations (Redford, Howell, Meijs, & Ratliff, 2016), and (3) people with more positive implicit evaluations of the “typical environmentalist” are more likely to engage in environmentally-friendly behavior than are people with less positive evaluations (Ratliff, Howell, & Redford, 2017).
Defensive Responding to Feedback about Implicit Attitudes
People react defensively to receiving feedback that contradicts their self-views, particularly when the feedback indicates something undesirable about them. Because egalitarianism is a cherished self-view for most Americans, we expect that learning that one harbors implicit biases should be threatening to the self, prompting defensive responding. In our initial studies, Jenny Howell and I investigated the role of implicit-explicit attitude discrepancy in defensive reactions to feedback on nine different IATs in an archival data set from the Project Implicit website (Howell & Ratliff, 2017a). People responded most defensively to feedback when: (a) their implicit and explicit attitudes were more discrepant than congruent, (b) their implicit attitudes aligned more with societal bias than did their explicit attitudes (e.g., a preference for Straight People relative to Gay People), and (c) they were majority group members (e.g., White participants in a race relevant task) rather than minority group members. Other studies in this general area of research show that: (1) the magnitude of implicit-explicit discrepancy in anti-fat attitudes predicts defensiveness more among people who think they are less biased than others (Howell & Ratliff, 2017b), and (2) explicit anti-gay bias decreased considerably, and implicit bias decreased slightly, in the last 10 years; at the same time, people are increasingly defensive about feedback suggesting bias (Howell, Ratliff, & Conway, in preparation).
Other Topics
Other ongoing research in my lab concerns: (a) people’s judgments about others’ moral responsibility for implicit attitudes, (b) attitudes toward transgender people, (c) attitudes toward white privilege, and (d) best scientific practices for producing reliable, replicable research.
