The associations in our heads belong to us: Searching for attitudes and knowledge in implicit evaluation

Explicitly, humans can distinguish their own attitudes from evaluations possessed by others. Implicitly, the viability of a distinction between attitudes and evaluative knowledge is less clear. We investigated relations between explicit attitudes, cultural knowledge and the Implicit Association Test (IAT). In seven studies (158 samples, N=107,709), the IAT was reliably and variably related to explicit attitudes, and explicit attitudes accounted for the relationship between the IAT and cultural knowledge. We suggest that people do not have introspective access to the associations formed via experience in a culture. Ownership of mental associations is established by presence in mind and influence on thinking, feeling and doing. Regardless of origin, associations are influential depending on their availability, accessibility, salience, and applicability. Distinguishing associations as “not mine” is a self-regulatory act and contributes to the distinction between explicit evaluation, where such acts are routine, and implicit evaluation, where they are not.