Attitude transfer is the phenomenon whereby attitudes toward group members generalize automatically to new individuals in the same group. Though robust at the implicit level, people consciously adjust this guilt-by-association thinking when reporting explicit attitudes (Ratliff & Nosek, 2008). We tested whether people could control implicit attitude transfer if given proper motivation and instruction. We attempted to induce intentional control over attitude transfer using a variety of established methods, but in eight studies, implicit attitudes formed and transferred to new group members. We conclude that implicit attitude transfer is a robust automatic phenomenon that is not disrupted by intentional control.
Manuscript was accepted at Basic and Applied Social Psychology in October, 2014 and can be downloaded under the 'files' tab. The Supplemental Materials as well as the file that was used for the meta-analysis that appears in the manuscript are also available.
All study materials and data appear in the components pages. Please contact the corresponding author Carlee Beth Hawkins (chawkins at chicagobooth dot edu) with any questions, comments, or requests.