ABSTRACT

Interest in the existence and limitations of automatic evaluation has especially increased over the last ten years, and has produced a sizable body of empirical findings. For example, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Cognition and Emotion have each devoted journal issues to implicit measures of evaluation in recent years (2001 and 2002 respectively), suggesting the topic's centrality in contemporary research (for reviews see Banaji, 2001; Bassili & Brown, 200.5; Blair, 2002; Fazio, 2001; Fazio & Olson, 2003; Musch & Klauer, 2003). The focus on how evaluative processes in particular can operate automatically is part of a broader, developing conceptualization of human cognition as driven by both controlled and automatic processing (e.g., Bargh & Ferguson, 2000; Chaiken & Trope, 1999; Greenwald, & Banaji, 199.5; Hassin, Uleman, & Bargh, 200.5; Sloman, 1996), as is evidenced by the other chapters in this volume.