title: He did what? The role of diagnosticity in revising implicit evaluations.
abstract: Research suggests that implicit evaluations are relatively insensitive to single instances of new, countervailing information that contradicts prior learning. In 6 experiments, however, we identify the critical role of the perceived diagnosticity of that new information: Counterattitudinal information that is deemed highly diagnostic of the target's true nature leads to a complete reversal of the previous implicit evaluation. Experiments 1a and 1b establish this effect by showing that newly formed implicit evaluations are reversed minutes later with exposure to a single piece of highly diagnostic information. Experiment 2 demonstrates a valence asymmetry in participants' likelihood of exhibiting rapid reversals of newly formed positive versus negative implicit evaluations. Experiment 3 provides evidence that a target must be personally responsible for the counterattitudinal behavior and not merely incidentally associated with a negative act. Experiment 4 shows that participants exhibit revision only when they judge the target's counterattitudinal behavior as offensive and thus diagnostic of his character. Experiment 5 demonstrates the behavioral implications of newly revised implicit evaluations. These studies show that newly formed implicit evaluations can be completely overturned through deliberative considerations about a single piece of counterattitudinal information.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology.
authors.forename: Jeremy
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cone
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Cornell University.
authors.forename: Melissa J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Ferguson
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D006801:Humans; D012919:Social Behavior; D012938:Social Perception; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult