Greenwald, A. G, Banaji, M. R., Rudman, L. A,, Farnham, S. D., Nosek, B. A., & Rosier, M. (2000). Prologue to a unified theory of attitudes, stereotypes, and self-concept. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Feeling and thinking: The role of aflect in social cognition and behavior (pp. 308-330). New York: Cambridge University Press.

13. Prologue to a Unified Theory of Attitudes, Stereotypes, and Self-concept ANTHONY G. GREENWALD, MAHZARIN R. BANAJI, LAURIE A. RUDMAN, SHELLY D. FARNHAM, BRIAN A. NOSEK, AND MARSHALL ROSIER

Introduction

The theoretical analysis in this chapter connects social psychology's central cognitive constructs, stereotype and self-concept, to its central affective constructs, attitude and self-esteem. In addition to proposing this unified account of social psychology's major theoretical con- structs, the chapter seeks to unify the competing affective-cognitive consistency principles of social psychology's classic consistency theo- ries: Heider's (1958) balance theory, Osgood and Tannenbaum's (1955) congruity theory, and Festinger's (1957) cognitive dissonance theory.

Initial support for the unified theory comes from experiments that use a new latency-based procedure, the Implicit Association Test (IAT), to obtain indirect measures of implicit attitudes, stereotypes, self-concept, and self-esteem (Banaji & Greenwald, 1995). The IAT's findings reveal patterns of affective-cognitive consistency that are not readily observed with explicit (self-report) measures.

Decline of the Consistency Principle and Reliance on Self- Report Measures

The principle of affect-guided cognition was cenhal to the major cog- nitive consistency theories of the 1950s: balance theory (Heider, 1958). congruity theory (Osgood & Tannenbaum, 1953). and cognitive disso- nance theory (Festinger, 1957). Through the combined force of these

This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (SBR- 9422242, SBR-9710172, SBR-9422241, and SBR-9709924) and from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH-41328 and MH-001533). Please address correspondence to Anthony G. Grwnwald, Departmrrlt of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

Prologue to a Unified Theory 309

theories, affective-cognitive consistency became a dominant theme in social psychology of the 1960s (see Abelson et al., 1968).

Despite being widely regarded as valid, cognitive consistency the- ories diminished in importance in the late 20th century, never having established a position of broad scope and applicability. This chapter suggests that the success of consistency theories was limited in part by the necessity of using self-report measures to test them. At about the same time that consistency theories achieved prominence in the 1960s, self-report measures were under attack because of their suscep- tibility to artifacts in the form of demand chnracteristics (Ome, 1962), evaluation apprehension (Rosenberg, 1969), and impression management (Tedeschi, Schlenker, & Bonoma, 1971; see also Weber & Cook, 1972).

Complementing the empirical attack on self-report measures, Nis- bett and Wilson (1977) constructed a strong theoretical critique of modem introspective (i.e., self-report) methods. During the period of concerted attack on self-report measures, social psychologists were attracted to indirect or nonreactive measures (Webb, Campbell, Schwartz, Sechrest, & Grove, 1981). However, t h s courtship with al- ternative measures was short-lived, being effectively sabotaged both by the labor-intensive character of these measures and by their re- moteness from the cognitive constructs on which social psychological theory was increasingly focused in the late 20th century.

How might social psychology's reliance on self-report measures have adversely affected cognitive consistency theories? A critical char- acteristic of self-report measures is that they oblige conscious over- sight. The respondent is asked both to retrieve and to report relevant knowledge. It is possible not only that respondents may report inac- curately what they can retrieve (i.e., may engage in impression man- agement), but also that they may simply be unable to retrieve some of the knowledge requested for self-report (i.e., may lack introspective access). For either of these reasons, the conscious oversight that is intrinsic to self-report may obscure or obliterate the operation of con- sistency processes and thereby misleadingly make the theories appear limited in scope.

Not until the late 1980s and early 1990s did useful alternatives to self-report become available for social cognition research. A wide va- riety of new measures was inspired by the use of indirect measures in implicit cognition research (e.g., Jacoby, Lindsay, & Toth, 1992; Schac-, ter, 1987). Following upon that development, Banaji and Greenwald '

(1995) described how concepts of implicit cognition could illuminate

310 A. G. Greenwald et 01.

social cognition's major constructs of attitude, stereotype, and self- esteem. Subsequently, Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz (1998) de- veloped a general method for research on implicit social cognition, the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which made possible the research to be reported in this chapter.

Assumptions Underlying a Unified Theory of Social Cognition

Associative Structure of SociallSemantic Knowledge

Social knowledge is knowledge of persons (including self) and groups. Social knowledge is here assumed to have an associative structure. This description of social knowledge as associative fits with various models for social cognition, including hierarchically connected proto- type nodes, exemplar representations of categories, and parallel dis- tributed process or connectionist networks. Associative models have the virtue of easily permitting representations of (a) connections among the structure's elements (persons, groups, concepts, traits, va- lence, etc.) and (b) multiple paths (and therefore variable strengths of connection) between representations. An associative social knowledge structure is a semantic structure of the sort that was contrasted with episodic knowledge by Tulving (1972). Whereas episodic knowledge is knowledge about experiences or events, semantic knowledge is the repository of repeated or enduring associations.

Centrality of Self

Much previous work has identified the self as a central entity in both the semantic and episodic structure of social knowledge (Greenwald, 1981; Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984; Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984; Koffka, 1935). In an associative knowledge structure, the self's property of centrality can be conceived by locating its representation (or node) associatively near other important nodes in the structure.

C o p i t i u ~ Representation of Valence

In the social knowledge structure, negative and positive valence are themselves identified as nodes. This device is in the spirit of Bower's (1981) representation of moods as nodes in an associative structure.'

Prologue to a Unificd The0 y

With valence represented in the associative structure of social knowl- edge, low and high self-esteem can be represented as connections of the self node with the negative or positive valence node. The obser- vation that self-esteem is typically positive in normal populations translates to an assumption that the self node is, for most people, strongly connected to the positive valence node.

The Unified Theory

The principles of the associative structure of knowledge, centrality of self, and positive valence of self are so widely accepted as to form pieces of the paradigmatic common ground of modem social psychol- ogy. In using these principles, the unified theory therefore stays within familiar theoretical territory. The main novelty of the unified theory is its attempt to establish that these familiar theoretical principles suffice both (a) to locate all of social cognition's major theoretical constructs in a common structure and (b) to generate interesting predictions of interrelation among these constructs.

A Social Knowledge Structure

Figure 13.1 displays a schematic social knowledge structure (SKS) that is based on the background ("paradigmatic common ground") as- sumptions just stated. Although Figure 13.1 includes only a small fraction of the objects and attributes of any actual social knowledge structure, it does show structures corresponding to all of social vsv- . - - I -1 chology's main theoretical constructs: sepconcept, sepesteem, stereotype,

and attitude.

Three Consistency Principles

In order to describe expected relations among self-esteem, self- concept, stereotypes, and attitudes, the unified theory needs assump- tions about constraints on relations within associative structures such as Figure 13.1's SKS. The following three principles have been named in ways that identify their debt to the 40-year tradition of consistency theories. Each principle is associated with the definition of a property of the associative knowled structure.

%

31 2 A . G. Greenludd et al.

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE STRUCTURE

Figure 13.1. A social knowledge structure (SKS). This structure includes represen- tations that correspond to social psychology's major constructs of self-copcept, self-esteem, stereotype, and attitude. Nodes (ovals) represent concepts and attrib- utes, and links (lines) represent associative relations. The self-concept includes links of the Me node to such things as roles (professor, grandfather) and traits (intelligent, athletic). Self-esteem is the collection of links - either direct or medi- ated via components of the self-concept - of the Me node to valence (+ + + or - - -). Parallel to the self-concept, stereotypes are group concepts, consisting of collections of traits linked to nodes representing social categories such as mother, grandfather, professor, male, female, and grandfather. Parallel to self-esteem, attitude is the collection of links, either direct or mediated via components of a stereotype, that connect a social category node to valence (+ + + or - - -).

Dejinition 1 : Sharedfirst-order link. Two nodes that are both linked to the same third node are said to have a shared first-order link.

Principle I : Balance-congruity. A new link tends to be formed between two nodes that have a shared first-order link.

In Figure 13.1's structure, the balance-congruity principle tends to produce (among others) several new links involving the M e node, including Me-mother, Me-strong, Me-nurturing, Me-old person, and Me- weak. Importantly, all but one (Me-strong) of these possible new direct links is opposed by the next principle. Principle 1 is named to ac- knowledge its debt both to Heider's (1946, 1958) balance theory and to Osgood and Tannenbaum's (1955) congruity theory.

Prologuc to a Unified TIicory 313

Definition 2: Bipolar opposition of nodes. Two nodes that have fewer shared first-order links than expected by chance are described as bipolar- opposed.

As shown in Figure 13.1, SKS has two prominent pairs of bipolar- opposed nodes, those for valence (positive, negative) and gender (male, female). (SKS contains one other bipolar pair - weak and strong - and could easily be extended to include others, such as intelligent- stupid, short-tall.)2

Principle 2: Imbalance-dissonance. The network resists forming new links that would result in a node having first-order links to both of a pair of bipolar-opposed nodes.

The resistance to new links embodied in this imbalance-dissonance principle is theoretically necessary to oppose the otherwise inevitable effect of the balance-congruity principle, in conjunction with environ- mental influences, to produce links between all pairs of nodes. In Figure 13.1, for example, Me is linked to short, which is linked to female. The imbalance-dissonance principle resists the linkage of Me to female, which would otherwise be called for by the balance-congruity principle. Similarly, in Figure 13.1's SKS, the imbalance-dissonance principle should resist Me-negative and Me-female.

The unified theory's third consistency principle shares the imbal- ance-dissonance principle's function of avoiding configurations that link a single node to both of two bipolar-opposed nodes. However, the third principle encompasses an especially problematic class of situations in which circumstances provoke sustained pressures toward generating these imbalanced configurations. Consider the situation in whch one's loved sibling (A) gets married to B, who happens to be a criminal (C). The existing association of A to positive valence should produce (by virtue of the balance-congruity principle together with an assumed new link of A to B) a link of B to positive valence. At the same time, the unalterable association of the concept criminal (C) with negative valence should (again, by virtue of balance congruity) tend to produce an association of B to negative valence. The resulting tendency for B to develop links to bipolar-opposed nodes (positive and negative valence) is clearly opposed by the imbalance-dissonance principle. This situation requires a more extreme solution than simple nonformation of the new link, because of expected sustained confron- tation of the imbalancing influences.

Definition 3: Pressured concept. A concept is pressured when sustained or repeated influences, operating in accord with the balance-congruity principle, should cause it to develop links to both of two bipolar- opposed nodes.

Principle 3: Difirerrtiation. Pressured concepts tend to split into subcon- cept~, each linked to one of the pressuring bipolar-opposed nodes.

In the example of the sibling's criminal spouse, the spouse (B) becomes a pressured concept. This pressure would be removable if B could split into two concepts, one linked to negative valence (e.g., B's past life as criminal) and the other to positive (B's current life as loving spouse). Differentiation of the concept may provide enough buffering to relieve the opposing pressures of the balance-congruity and imbal- ance-dissonance principles. The differentiation principle embodies the cognitive operation that has been identified as subtyping in research on stereotypes (e.g., Deaux, Winton, Crowley, & Lewis, 1985; Hew- stone, Macrae, Griffiths, & Milne, 1994; Weber & Crocker, 1983).

Relations to Heider's Formulation of Balance Theory

The similarities between Heider's (1958) balance theory and the uni- fied theory are far more compelling than are the differences. Insights corresponding to the unified theory's three principles can be seen in Heider's (1958) diagrams of balanced and imbalanced configurations for sentiment and unit relations. In his diagrams (see Figure 13.2) the balance-congruity principle appears in the balanced structures b-d, the imbalance-dissonance principle in diagram a, and the differentiation principle in diagram e. The chief differences between Heider's repre- sentations and those of the unified theory are that Heider (a) restricted attention to links that involved a person object (either self [ p ] or other [o ] ; (b) distinguished unit (association) from sentiment (liking) links, in contrast to the present use of only one type of link; (c) focused more on the role of consistency in modifying existing links than on its role in creating (or avoiding) new links; and (c) did not distinguish be- tween unrelated and bipolar-opposed pairs of nodes.3

The differences of the present analysis from Heider's allow us to identify closer relatedness among social psychology's cognitive and affective constructs than was previously apparent. Heider took it as a goal to represent the complexity of consciously construed relations among psychological objects. To do that, he focused on person-object

P r ~ l o ~ ~ u e to a Umified Theory

The given situation is unbalanced: two positive relations and one negative relation.

Change in sentiment relation resulting in a balance of three positiive relations.

f 4 Change in sentiment relabion multing in a balance of two negative relations and one positive relation.

positive^ &Negative pan of o / / \pn or o a a G

P- ( p DL r) -t (el

P- (4

Change in unit r d r t i i resulting in Change in unit relation through a balance of two negative relatiis differentiition rcrultlng in a and one positive relation. balance of two negative relations

and one positive relation.

Figure 13.2. Heider's representation of consistency principles. From Heider (1958, p. 208).

relations and distinguished unit from sentiment relations. His discov- ery that most person-bject relations could be reduced to just the unit and sentiment relations was a remarkable and theoretically effective simplification. The present analysis seeks even broader scope by using an even more radical simplification: collapsing both (a) the distinction between person concepts and other concepts and (b) the distinction between unit and sentiment relations. This increased simplification

316 A. G. Greenwald et al.

has certainly been influenced by modern connectionist and neural network modeling, itself a form of theory that reduces mental repre- sentations to node and link structures (Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986; Smith, 1996).

Predicting Relations Among Self-Concept, Stereotypes, and Attitudes

The preceding section stated three principles, all based on consistency theories from the 1950s (especially on Heider's balance theory). These three principles are presumed to operate on a conceptual structure that can encompass social psychology's major affective (attitude, self- esteem) and cognitive (stereotype, self-concept) constructs. The rest of this chapter develops this theory's predictions for relationships among self-concept, self-esteem, stereotypes, and attitudes; describes a re- search method (the Implicit Association Test) that permits empirical tests of these predictions; and provides the results of new studies that test the unified theory's predictions.

Relations Among Self-Concept, Self-Esteem, and Ingroup Attitude

The balance-congruity principle tends to produce same-valenced atti- tudes toward self and concepts that are closely associated with self (i.e., components of self-concept or identity). Figure 13.3. illustrates this form of theoretical derivation for the gender self-concept. For women, self (Me in Figure 13.3) is typically associated with both posi- tive valence and female identity. The balance-congruity principle calls for the further association of positive with the concept of female. More particularly, the strength of positive attitude toward female (i.e., of the female-positive link) should be a joint function of the strengths of the two links (Me-positive and Me-female) on which it depends.

Relations Among Self-Concept, Gender Stereotype, and Attitude Toward Math

The unified theory assumes that the knowledge base of major social stereotypes - for example, those involving sex and race categories - is approximately the same for all members of society. Therefore, men and women should have similar knowledge of the prevailing gender stereotypes that associate (for example) male identity with greater strength and female identity with greater nurturance. This similarity

Prologue to a Unified Theo y 317

between gender-stereotype knowledge possessed by males and fe- males notwithstanding, the unified theory predicts various affective- cognitive sex differences because of sex-typing of the self-concept (i.e., male traits associated to self for males, female traits to self for fe- males). Figure 13.4 shows female and male structures involving the

Self-Esteem, Self-Concevt, and Ingrouv Attitude

Figure 13.3. Operation of the balance-congruity principle. In conjunction with strong Me-positive and Melfemale links, the balance-congruity principle should produce the female-positive link, which is indicated by the dashed line.

Figure 13.4. Effect of stereotypes and self-esteem on self-concept and attitudes. The dashed links are self-concept and attitude links generated by the balance-

Math. Arts. Male, Female: Female Perspective Math. Arts. Male, Female: Male Perspective

congruity principle, operating in conjunction with the~e-positive -and either the Me-male link (for men) or the Mefemale link (for women). The imbalance- dissonance principle, operating together with gender stereotypes that associate male with math and female with arts, opposes links of math to Me or to positive for women, and of arts to Me or positive for men.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I I I I I

318 A. G. Greenwald et al. Prolope to n Unified Theory 319

concepts of math, arts, male, and female. Both the female and male structures incorporate gender stereotypes that associate female more with arts and male more with math. Also, both structures incorporate normal self-positivity. The critical difference between Figure 13.4's two structures is that the female version includes a strong Meyemale link, whereas the male version includes a strong Me-male link. The different strengths of these sex self-concept links in the two figures, in conjunction with both the balance-congruity and imbalance- dissonance principles, lead to predictions of both (a) a self-concept difference - greater strength of Me-arts than Me-math for women than for men, and (b) an attitude difference - greater positive valence of arts than math for women than for men.

Relations Between Gender ldentity and Valence of Gender Stereotypes

Figure 13.5 analyzes a structure similar to that of Figure 13.4. In parallel with the balance-congruity effect in the left panel of Figure 13.4, the configuration of Figure 13.5 should lead women (a) tb de- velop a Me-weak association and @) to associate weak with positive. At the same time, both of these links should be resisted by balance- congruity pressures derived from the cultural association of weak with negative. In this situation, the weak node is under pressure to become associated with the bipolar opposites, positive and negative. This situa- tion calls for operation of the unified theory's third consistency prin-

Figure 13.5. Expected effect of the differentiation principle on women's concep- tion of weak. The left panel indicates, as dashed lines, two links involving weak that should be (a) strengthened by the balance-congruity principle, but (b) re- sisted by the imbalancedissonance principle. The second diagram indicates a resolution achieved by splitting weak into a positively valenced subconcept that is associated with female, and a negatively valenced subconcept that is not.

ciple, differentiation, which can remove pressure on the zoetlk concept by splitting it into separate positive- and negative-valenced represen- tations.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT): A Technique for Measuring Associative Distance in the Social Knowledge Structure

The unified theory predictions of Figures 13.3 to 13.5 might be tested using self-report measures of the type that have been standard in social cognition research of the past several decades. For two reasons, however, self-report procedures are inappropriate for these tests. First, some of the associative links of SKS may not be available to introspec- tion and may therefore not permit assessment by self-report. Second, self-report measures allow response artifacts (e.g., impression man- agement) that could distort reporting of links that are introspectively available. Rather than using the direct measurement strategy of self- report, then, the unified theory's predictions are more suitably tested with indirect measures that avoid reliance on introspection and that are less susceptible to response artifacts.

Much recent research has focused on developing or applying indi- rect measures. In social cognition research, measures based on various cognitive priming techniques have been especially widely used. How- ever, a limitation of these indirect measures is that their effect sizes have not been large enough to reflect individual differences. By con- trast, the recently developed Implicit Association Test (IAT) method (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) does have the needed sensi- tivity.

The IAT Method

As it has been developed to this point, the Implicit Association Test measures relative strengths of associative links in a structure such as SKS. For example, rather than providing an absolute measure of strength of thefemale-positizw link, it provides a measure that compares the strength of female-positive to that of male-p~sitive.~

The IAT method works by obliging subjects to map four categories of stimuli onto just two responses. When the instructions are such that the two categories that share each response are conceptually close, the task is considerably easier than when the two categories that share

320 A. G. Grccnzoald et al.

each response are more distant. The IAT is illustrated in Figure 13.6 for the four categories of male, female, self, and other - a combination that provides an IAT measure of biological gender identity (or self- concept).

Using the IAT to Test Utl$ed Theory Predictions

This section describes initial tests of the three predictions developed in the preceding section. In these tests, the IAT was used to obtain the needed measures of associative structure.

Prediction 1 (based on the balance-congruity principle). For women, the strength of positive attitude toward female should be a joint (interactive) function of the strength of the two links (Me-positive and Me-feniale) on which it depends.

This prediction was tested in a study of Farnham and Greenwald (1998). Participants were 63 undergraduate women at the University

Sample Implicit Association Test: Gender Self-Concept (Identity)

IAT Items in

Four Cate- gories

sELF OTHER

I They Me Them

My Their Mine Theirs Self Other

MALE FEMALE - Male Female Man Woman Boy Girl He She Sir Lady

respond left respond right

Task 1 SELF + OTHER MALE + FEMALE

Task 2 SELF + MALE OTHER + FEMALE

Task 3 SELF + FEMALE OTHER + MALE

Figure 13.6. Illustration of the Implicit Association Test. The IAT starts by intro- ducing subjects to the four categories used in the task. In this illustration, the categories are introduced by asking subjects to respond "left" to words repre- senting either rtrnl~ orfinralr, and to respond "right" to words representing either self or trt11c.r. The IAT measure is obtained from the next two tasks, one in which rrlnlv and self are assigned to "left" and frrrlnlr and otlrrr to "right," and another In which fiwnlt. and stdf are assigned to "left" and rrlalv and otlwr to "right." The speed difference between the latter two tasks provides the desired measure. For example, i f the subject responds more r ap id l~ whrn rrrnlr and rrlf share a re- sponse, this indlcati,~ that rtmk is associatively closer to sr!f than isfitrrale.

of Washington. As summarized in Figure 13.7, each subject completed three IAT measures, one measuring gender self-concept (or identity), one measuring self-esteem, and one measuring attitude toward the (female) ingroup. The mean IAT results graphed in Figure 13.7 show implicit female identity and female positivity, both of which agree with unified-theory expectations due to operation of the balance- congruity principle together with self-positivity (which can also be seen in the figure). However, the test provided by these sample means is not nearly so stringent a test of the unified theory as is a test based on correlations among the three implicit measures. The expectation is that implicit attitude toward female will be a multiplicative function of the other two implicit measures. The prediction was confirmed in a multiple regression analysis in which the IAT measure of implicit female positivity was predicted from (a) the other two IAT measures and (b) the interaction of the two. In this analysis, both IAT predictors significantly and uniquely predicted attitude toward females (gender identity: beta = .32, p = .01; self-esteem: beta = .36, p = .006). The critical finding was a statistically significant effect of the interaction (product) term in the second step of this hierarchical regression anal- ysis (beta = .22, p = .05).5

The interaction effect of the Farnham and Greenwald (1998) study supports the balance-congruity principle by showing that the positive relation between implicit gender identity and implicit attitude toward female is moderated by implicit self-esteem. The multivariate model (including the interaction effect) explained 33% of the variance (R =

.57) in the female-positive link. By contrast, for the parallel analysis with explicit measures, neither of the univariate effects (beta = -.15, -.21) nor their interaction (beta = .01) was even in the expected positive direction. In summary, evidence for the balance-congruity principle was obtained with moderate clarity using implicit measures, but not at all with explicit measures. Similar findings in the domain of implicit racial attitudes, self-concept, and racial identity were ob- tained by Rosier, Banaji, and Greenwald (1998) in an investigation of Black undergraduate students at Yale University.

The balance-congruity principle was additionally tested in samples that included both men and women in a study by Lemm and Banaji (1998). Participants were 49 undergraduates (28 men and 21 women) at Yale University. Each subject completed two IAT measures (see Figure 13.8), one measuring gender self-concept (or identity), and one measuring attitude toward gender groups (male and female). Self and

I A T

Items

SELFOTHER . l i n t name

Middle name . L8st name City State

MALE FEMALE

Male - Femmle .Man .Woman .Boy .Girl . Son Daughter .Sir . Lady

POSITIVE NEGATIVE

Joy . Gloom .Warmth . Agony -Gold Pain . Happy . Stink

Smile Filth

WOMEN SUBJECTS (n=62)

IMPLICIT MALE P O S ~ maletpositive v. femaktnegative maletnegative v. f e m a l ~ i t i v e

0 2* 400 01 8W la00 I200

M E A N L A T E N C Y (MS)

Figure 13.7. Design and results of the study by Famham and Greenwald (1998). The self-other categories were composed of subject-generated items that, for self, included the subject's first, middle, and last names, hometown, and home state. The concept other was represented by similar items selected by the subjdt to be familiar but not self-related. The IAT t$ert, which indicates relative associative strengths, is measured by a latency difference between two tasks, latencies for which are shown in adjacent bars in the figure. Combinations of concepts that produced relatively low latency when sharing a response (see Figure 13.6) are thereby identified as being more closely associated than are combinations that yield higher latency. In the first pair of bars in the figure, the data indicated (unsurprisingly for the women subjects of this study) that self is more closely associdted with female than male

other items for the self-concept measure were generated using 10 standard categories (e.g., name, hometown, phone number, social se- curity number). The items for the "masculine" and "feminine" cate- gories were verbs (e.g., masculine: controls, dares, employs,fixes, governs, profits; feminine: cleans, feels, irons, needs, prepares, senses, tolerates). In support of the balance-congruity principle, the IAT results in Figure 13.8 show strong evidence of implicit gender identity for both males and females. (That is, males combine self with male more easily than female with self, and females do the reverse.) Similarly, the gender attitude IAT data also agreed with the balance-congruity expectation that women will implicitly prefer feminine to masculine, and males will do the reverse (see Figure 13.8). In addition, supporting the balance-congruity principle, a correlation of r = .64 was obtained between the gender-identity and gender-attitude measures; and posi-

I A T

Items

M E NOTME - - a Fint name

Middle name Last name . City State

MASC. FEM. - - . controls cleans . daru . feels . employs . tolerate . film . n d s . profits sensu

PLEASANT UNPLEASANT

' beach . dancer .friend agony . laughter .disaster

peace .grief - plusure . toothache

WOMEN Imolicit Gender Identity ]

MEN (n=28) !(p=21] I , I l l

m e m a k v. not-mefernale

ImoLicit Gender Attitude

pleas.+male v. nnpkas.+female

pleas.+female v. unpleas.+male

Figure 13.8. Design and results of the study by Lemm and Banaji (1998). Gender identity and gender attitude were measured in Yale men and women using the two tasks shown in the figure. Concepts that were more strongly associated (e.g., female + self for female subjects) were grouped more easily (rapidly) than con- cepts less associated (e.g., male + self for female subjects). The two IAT tasks revealed that males and females each identified more strongly with, and showed greater liking for, their ingroup.

tivity toward own gender was correlated with strength of own-gender identity.

Prediction 2 (based on the imbalance-dissonance principle). Compared with men, women should show a stronger link of Me-arts relative to Me- math, and greater positive valence for arts than math.

This prediction was tested in a series of studies by Nosek, Banaji, and Greenwald (1998). Participants were male and female undergraduate students at Yale University who provided data for four IAT measures, three of which included a contrast of concepts of mathematics and arts/literature (see Figure 13.9). As expected, both men and women yielded IAT data patterns that indicated the stereotypical association of mathematics more with male than female. Confirming Prediction 2, the male-female difference in relative strengths of Me-mafh and Me- arts (greater Me-math for men) was observed, as was the predicted difference in math attitude (math-positive stronger for men than women).

Some additional findings of the Nosek et al. study were consistent with expectations of the balance-congruity principle. Combining (a)

324 A. G. Greenwald et al. Prologue to a Unified Theory 325

. MyscY Theirs .equation . drama . him . her I . numbers . dana I his hen

Implicit Gender ldenti sclf+male v. othe%emale self+female v. othertmale

MALE FEMALE

. brother . sister

.father . mother

.son 'daughter

SELF OTHER - .I They .Me . Tbem . Mine . Tbeir

lmolicit Gender Stereo- femalebmath v. malehrb femalr+arta v. maletmath

.math sari algebn poetry

.calculus novel

implicit Attitude toward M a t h math+positive v. v t s h c p t i v e math+nqative v. arb+poeitive

Implicit Math Self-Conce~t sclf+math v. otherhrta sclf+aN v. othertmath

POSITIVE NEGATIVE

.Joy . Gloom

.Warmth .Agony Gold . Pain - Happy .Stink . Smile . Filth

MEN (n=45) -

Figure 13.9. Design and results of the study by Nosek, Banaji, and Greenwald (1998). This study used a generic Me-them contrast in place of the idiographic self-other contrast of the studies shown in Figures 13.7 and 13.8. In addition, Nosek et al. added several IAT measures, including a nrath-arts contrast and collected data for both male and female subjects. Results confirmed predictions based on the imbalance-d~ssonance principle.

the balance-congruity principle with (b) assumed positive valence of self and (c) assumed implicit own-sex gender identity yields an ex- pected correlation between content of implicit gender stereotype and implicit attitude toward the gender-stereotyped trait. For males, im- plicit favorability to math was correlated as expected with implicit association of math with male gender (r = .36, p = .02). For female participants, the expected opposite correlation was observed: that is, the stronger the math-masculine association, the more negative the attitude toward math (r = -.35, p = .02).

Prediction 3 (based on the differentiation principle). For women, the concept of weak should divide into a positively valenced subconcept that is associated with female, and a negatively valenced subconcept that is not associated with female.

This prediction was tested in a set of experiments by Rudman, Green- wald, and McChee (1998). Their Experiment 2 showed that men and women alike possess a stereotype that associates strength more with male than female. In that experiment, tnalr and fentalc were repre- sented by familiar first names ( e . ~ . , Beth, Marcia, Sara vs. Brian, Scott,

Kevin) and strong and weak were represented by words that were matched in evaluation. Evidence for the expected (male = strong) stereotype was found for both male and female subjects, regardless of whether strong and weak were represented by evaluatively negative words (e.g., destroy, violent vs. feeble, lame), neutral words (e.g., iron, durable vs. feather, quiet), or positive words (e.g., bold, mighty vs. gentle, flower).

In Rudman et al.'s (1998) third experiment, 42 undergraduate women and 27 undergraduate men at the University of Washington each responded to two IAT tasks in which the concepts male and female were again represented by familiar male and female first names. These two IATs differed in the manner in which the concepts weak and strong were represented. In one task, strong was represented by five evalua- tively positive words (bold, mighty, power, robust, stamina) and weak by five evaluatively negative words (feeble, frail, lame, scrawny, sickly). In the second IAT, these evaluative assignments were re- versed, with strong represented by five evaluatively negative words (destroy, fight, fury, rage, violent) and weak by five evaluatively posi- tive words (delicate, fine, flower, gentle, lamb).

The predicted finding was that women should respond differently to these two tasks. Specifically, they should associate female with the positive aspects of weak, but not with the negative aspects of weak. The results clearly confirmed this expectation, as is shown in Figure 13.10. When weak was paired with positive words and strong with negative, women associated Me with weak. However, they did not at all associ- ate Me with weak when the evaluative assignments were reversed. It was expected that men would not associate Me with weak even when weak was represented by evaluatively positive words. Surprisingly, however, men identified somewhat more with the negative strong category (contrasted with positive weak) than with the positive strong (contrasted with negative weak). The overall pattern indicates that the negative strong items are especially masculine and the positive zucak items especially feminine. There was no indication that men differen- tiate the strong category in the way that women appear to differentiate the weak category. Rather, there was a slight indication that men dif- ferentiate strong in an unexpected way, associating male more with the negative than the positive aspects of strong. This unexpected out- come can be taken as an indication that the male stereotype strongly associates the aggressive aspects of strength with male.h

Prologue to n Uilified Theory 327

MALE FEMALE

Matthew Elaine Alan Dime

.Paul Kate

.Steve .Susan Eric Sandra

WEAK+ STRONG- . delicate * destroy fine . fight flower fu y

.gentle . rage . Iamb violent

WOMEN (n=4 Im~licit Gender Stereo- 1 I I 1

WEAK- STRONG+

feeble . bold .mil mighty -lame .power . scrawny robust .sickly 'stamina

Figure 13.10. Design and results of the study by Rudman, Greenwald, and Mc- Chee (1998). This study operationalized the male-female contrast using sex-typed names in place of the nouns and pronouns used by Nosek et al. (1998; see Figure 13.9). Women's different gender associations for the two evaluatively, varied versions of the strength attribute were consistent with expectations based on the differentiation principle (see Figure 13.5).

Relations to Other Chapters in this Volume

Several of this volume's chapters deal with influences of current emo- tional state on cognitive processing (see chapters by Berkowitz et. al, Bless, Eich & Macaulay, Fiedler, Forgas, Martin, and Niedenthal & Holberstadt). Others examine the reverse connection, the effect of cog- nitive factors on affective experience (see chapters by Blascovich & Mendes, Leary, and Smith & Kirby). The present theory has not yet attempted to represent or analyze phenomena involving current emo- tional state either as a causal influence on cognition or as a conse- quence of cognitive processes. (It is similarly true that current emo- tional state was not a central focus of the classic cognitive consistency theories.) Bower's (1981) method of representing mood as a node in associative structure might serve as a starting point for incorporating mood into the unified theory. However, that approach would likely fall short of the goals of most of the present volume's authors, because Bower was concerned more with modeling the effects of knowledge

about mood than with modeling effects of current mood on cognition or of cognition on mood (see chapters by Eich & Macaulay and Nie- denthal & Halberstadt).

Conclusion

This chapter set out to develop a theoretical unification of social psy- chology's major cognitive constructs, stereotype and self-concept, with its major affective constructs, attitude and self-esteem. This obviously ambitious goal was prompted by the recent adaptation of cognitive psychology's implicit cognition concepts to describe implicit forms of the social-cognitive constructs of attitude, stereotype, and self-esteem (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). The goal of unification was encouraged by an expectation that new measures of implicit attitudes, stereotypes, and self-concept would make it possible to identify closer relation- ships among these major constructs than had been apparent from decades of research conducted with self-report measures.

The chapter provides the first overview of findings obtained with a newly developed general method for measuring conceptual relations at the associative level, the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald et al., 1998). As data collection proceeded, it became apparent that it will not be necessary to create fundamentally new principles in order to make progress in the theoretical unification effort. Three principles originat- ing in social psychology's cognitive consistency theories of the 1950s - especially that of Heider (1958) - appeared to be sufficient. This was a satisfying outcome of the research, because the resulting consistency- based unified theory is at once simpler and possibly broader in ex- planatory scope than the set of three cognitive consistency theories on which it was based.

Notes

1. This view intentionally sidesteps the question of relative processing prior- ity of affect and cognition, which is a focus of chapters by Zajonc and by Smith and Kirby in this volume.

2. For this initial statement of the unified theory, the concept of bipolar op- position may not need any more precise statement than given in Definition 2. Nevertheless, to indicate how greater precision can be achieved, consider that the opposition of two nodes can be quantified in terms of their number of shared first-order links compared with the total number of links. For example, consider the weak and nurturing nodes in SKS (see Figure 13.1).

328 A. G. Greenwald et al .

These two nodes have four shared first-order links in relation to eight total links (four for weak and four for nurtur~ng). Sharing four of eight first-order links is substantial, given that the expected number of shared first-order links for weak and nurturing is just over one. (To calculate: there are 15 nodes with which these two might have shared first-order links. With each of weak and nurturing having four direct links, the expected number of shared first-order links is therefore 4/5 4/15 15 = 1.07.) By contrast, strong and weak have zero shared first-order links in relation to six total links (four for weak and two for strong). Although a measure of bipolar opposition should be based on a more complete specification of associative structure than in Figure 13.1, the patterns just described indicate that weak and nurturing are positively associated (even though there is no direct link between them), whereas weak and strong are possibly in bipolar opposition.

3. Heider's struggle with the awkwardness of not having a distinction like that between unrelated and bipolar-opposed nodes can be seen in his discussion of "some difficulties with the notU (i.e., not-unit) relation" (Hei- der, 1958, p. 201).

4. Associative priming techniques also compare strengths of two categories of association. Priming techniques do this by comparing the effects of two contrasted categories of primes (e.g., evaluatively positive vs. negative; semantically related vs. unrelated; male vs. female) on responses to various target stimuli. Fortunately, such relative indicators of association strength are quite useful in testing the unified theory, especially for predictions that involve associations to bipolar-opposed concepts.

5. The interaction effect finding, although theoretically important, must be regarded as tentative both because of the low power of the study for an effect of the magnitude observed, and because even this effect would have been smaller without exclusion of two subjects who appeared to be outliers from the multivariate data pattern.

6. The analysis of compartmentalization in Showers's Chapter 12 in this volume is compatible with this chapter's use of differentiation as a consistency principle.

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