The generality of the automatic attitude activation effect.

TLDR

Prior work by Fazio et al. (1986) showed that adjectives are evaluated more quickly when preceded by attitude objects of the same valence than by opposite-valence objects, indicating an automatic attitude activation effect. This study examined whether the automatic attitude activation effect generalizes across different attitude objects and experimental procedures.

Abstract

Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, and Kardes (1986) demonstrated that Ss were able to evaluate adjectives more quickly when these adjectives were immediately preceded (primed) by attitude objects of similar valence, compared with when these adjectives were primed by attitude objects of opposite valence. Moreover, this effect obtained primarily for attitude objects toward which Ss were presumed to hold highly accessible attitudes, as indexed by evaluation latency. The present research explored the generality of these findings across attitude objects and across procedural variations. The results of 3 experiments indicated that the automatic activation effect is a pervasive and relatively unconditional phenomenon. It appears that most evaluations stored in memory, for social and nonsocial objects alike, become active automatically on the mere presence or mention of the object in the environment.