Exploring the unspoken: Maternal implicit attitudes and mother–child emotional availability.

= 217) were recruited from a longitudinal study; dyads were videotaped during a free-play interaction, and their behavior was coded for emotional availability (EA). Mothers completed the MyChild Implicit Association Test indexing their implicit attitudes toward their child. Maternal implicit attitudes were positively associated with mothers' EA, an effect driven by mother-son dyads; these effects held when controlling for child behavior, supporting the unique role of implicit attitudes in guiding mothers' EA. Regarding the child's EA (responsivity, inclusion), mother-son and mother-daughter dyads showed the opposite pattern: Maternal implicit attitudes were positively associated with sons' EA but negatively associated with daughters' EA. These findings highlight the importance of implicit attitudes in the mother-child relationship and are among the few to link implicit attitudes to the attitude target's behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).