Easier done than undone: Asymmetry in the malleability of implicit preferences.

• DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.90.1.1
• Publication Date: 2006-01-31T20:33:39Z
• Authors: Aiden P. Gregg; Beate Seibt; Mahzarin R. Banaji
• Keywords: Implicit attitude; Empirical evidence

Dual-process models imply that automatic attitudes should be less flexible than their self-reported counterparts; the relevant empirical record, however, is mixed. To advance debate, authors conducted 4 experiments investigating how readily preferences for one imagined social group over another could induced or reversed. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed preferences, like ones, by both abstract supposition concrete learning. In contrast, 3 newly formed unlike not reversed either Thus, relative inflexibility of implicit appears to entail, immunity sophisticated cognition, nor resistance swift formation, but insensitivity modification once formed.