An Overview of Implicit Measures of Attitudes: Methods, Mechanisms, Strengths, and Limitations

Abstract The use of implicit measures of attitudes has great potential to advance our understanding of process and mechanism in the field of communication. These measures assess automatically activated attitudes, which have the potential to influence spontaneous decisions and outcomes, and may operate, to some extent, below individuals' consciousness. A large number of implicit measures have been developed and tested. These measures use a variety of different procedures and have various strengths and limitations. This piece provides an overview of three types of implicit measures of attitudes: (a) evaluative priming measures, (b) the implicit association test (IAT) and several of its variants, and (c) the recently developed affect misattribution procedure (AMP). Emphasis is placed on issues of mechanism, reliability, validity, and strengths and limitations of each measure. Acknowledgments This article was accepted for publication by David Ewoldsen, prior editor of this journal. Notes 1"Others" were used as fillers to detract from the emphasis on Blacks and Whites.