ABSTRACT

Implicit Cognition Building on the implicit-explicit distinction in memory (Roediger, 1990; Schacter, Bowers, & Booker, 1989), Greenwald and Banaji proposed a general distinction for implicit cognition. They defined an implicit construct as "the introspectively unidentified (or inaccurately identified) trace of past experience that mediates R" where R refers to the category of responses that are assumed to be influenced by that construct (Greenwald & Banaji, 199.5, p .. 5). Greenwald and Banaji applied that general definition to social psychology'S most central constructs - attitudes, stereotypes, and self-esteem. They noted that implicit cognition could reveal associative information that people were either unwilling or unable to report. In other words, implicit cognition could reveal traces of past experience that people might explicitly reject because it conflicts with values or beliefs, or might avoid revealing because the expression could have negative social consequences. Even more likely, implicit cognition can reveal information that is not available to introspective access even if people were motivated to retrieve and express it (see Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000, for a similar theoretical distinction for the attitude construct specifically). Such information is simply unreachable in the same way that memories are sometimes unreachable, not just in amnesic patients but in every person.