Yoav Bar-Anan

National differences in gender–science stereotypes predict national sex differences in science and math achievement

About 70% of more than half a million Implicit Association Tests completed by citizens of 34 countries revealed expected implicit stereotypes associating science with males more than with females. We discovered that nation-level implicit stereotypes predicted nation-level sex differences in 8th-grade science and mathematics achievement. Self-reported stereotypes did not provide additional predictive validity of the achievement gap. We suggest that implicit stereotypes and sex differences in science participation and performance are mutually reinforcing, contributing to the persistent gender gap in science engagement.

The association between psychological distance and construal level: Evidence from an implicit association test

According to construal level theory (N. Liberman, Y. Trope, & E. Stephan, in press; Y. Trope & N. Liberman, 2003), people use a more abstract, high construal level when judging, perceiving, and predicting more psychologically distal targets, and they judge more abstract targets as being more psychologically distal. The present research demonstrated that associations between more distance and higher level of construal also exist on a pure conceptual level. Eight experiments used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & J. L. K. Schwartz, 1998) to demonstrate an association between words related to construal level (low vs. high) and words related to four dimensions of distance (proximal vs. distal): temporal distance, spatial distance, social distance, and hypotheticality. In addition to demonstrating an association between level of construal and psychological distance, these findings also corroborate the assumption that all 4 dimensions of psychological distance are related to level of construal in a similar way and support the notion that they all are forms of psychological distance.

Scientific Utopia: I. Opening Scientific Communication

Existing norms for scientific communication are rooted in anachronistic practices of bygone eras making them needlessly inefficient. We outline a path that moves away from the existing model of scientific communication to improve the efficiency in meeting the purpose of public science—knowledge accumulation. We call for six changes: (a) full embrace of digital communication; (b) open access to all published research; (c) disentangling publication from evaluation; (d) breaking the “one article, one journal” model with a grading system for evaluation and diversified dissemination outlets; (e) publishing peer review; and (f) allowing open, continuous peer review. We address conceptual and practical barriers to change and provide examples showing how the suggested practices are being used already. The critical barriers to change are not technical or financial; they are social. Although scientists guard the status quo, they also have the power to change it.

Mood and Global-Local Focus: Priming a Local Focus Reverses the Link Between Mood and Global-Local Processing

Positive moods promote a focus on the forest (global focus) and negative moods, a focus on the trees (local focus). Is this well-established link fixed or variable? Does it reflect a direct influence of affect, as usually assumed, or is it frequently observed simply because a global perspective is often dominant? If affect serves as information about the value of currently accessible inclinations, and a global focus is generally the default perspective, then the global focus of positive affect and local focus of negative affect might be variable rather than fixed. Two experiments tested this hypothesis using different mood inductions, different tests of global-local focus, and different methods of inducing global and local perspectives. In each, we discovered that positive affect empowered whatever focus was momentarily dominant. Thus, whether individuals in happy moods saw the forest or the trees depended only on which of the two had been primed.

Understanding and Using the Brief Implicit Association Test: Recommended Scoring Procedures

A brief version of the Implicit Association Test (BIAT) has been introduced. The present research identified analytical best practices for overall psychometric performance of the BIAT. In 7 studies and multiple replications, we investigated analytic practices with several evaluation criteria: sensitivity to detecting known effects and group differences, internal consistency, relations with implicit measures of the same topic, relations with explicit measures of the same topic and other criterion variables, and resistance to an extraneous influence of average response time. The data transformation algorithms D outperformed other approaches. This replicates and extends the strong prior performance of D compared to conventional analytic techniques. We conclude with recommended analytic practices for standard use of the BIAT.

Evaluative conditioning and conscious knowledge of contingencies: A correlational investigation with large samples

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is a change in the valence of a stimulus that results from pairing the stimulus with an affective stimulus. Two high-powered studies (total N = 1,161) investigated the nature of the relationship between EC and contingency awareness measured as contingency memory. Stronger EC occurred among people with more accurate and more confident memory of the pairings. Awareness was a necessary condition for EC, but EC was not necessary for awareness. Supporting a propositional account of EC, we found evidence for intentional reliance on the contingency for the evaluation of stimuli. We also found evidence that contingency memory was based both on the actual contingency and on preexisting attitudes.

The Sorting Paired Features Task A Measure of Association Strengths

The sorting paired features (SPF) task measures four associations in a single response block. Using four response options (e.g., good-Republicans, bad-Republicans, good-Democrats, and bad-Democrats), each trial requires participants to categorize two stimuli at once to a category pair (e.g., wonderful-Clinton to good-Democrats). Unlike other association measures, the SPF requires simultaneous categorization of both components of the association in the same trial. Providing measurement flexibility, it is sensitive to both focal, attended concepts and nonfocal, unattended stimulus features (e.g., gender of individuals in a politics SPF). Three studies measure race, gender, and political evaluations, differentiate automatic evaluations between known groups, provide evidence of convergent and discriminant validity with other attitude measures, and illustrate the SPFs unique measurement qualities.

Reporting Intentional Rating of the Primes Predicts Priming Effects in the Affective Misattribution Procedure

In the affective misattribution procedure (AMP), pairs of prime and target stimuli appear rapidly in succession. Attitudes toward the prime influence the evaluation of the target despite instructions to avoid this influence. Because this priming effect presumably happens without people’s knowledge, the AMP is used to study automatic evaluation. Participants in four studies performed the AMP and reported their perception of the priming effect. The authors found that the priming reflected reliable and valid attitudes toward the primes mostly among participants who reported that the priming occurred and that they intentionally rated the primes instead of the targets. The authors conclude that the AMP hardly captures attitude effects that escape people’s knowledge. The AMP’s good psychometric qualities as an attitude measure rely mainly on a small subset of participants who believe that they intentionally caused the attitude effect.

The Unseen Mind

The human mind operates largely out of view, and yet people are unaware of their unawareness, confabulating reasons for their actions and preferences.

The effect of object–valence relations on automatic evaluation

Two experiments tested the effect of co-occurrence of a target object with affective stimuli on automatic evaluation of the target when the relation between the target and the affective stimuli suggests that they have opposite valence. Participants learned about targets that ended an unpleasant noise or a pleasant music. The valence of such targets is opposite to the valence of the affective stimuli that co-occur with them. Participants reported preference for targets that ended noise over targets that ended music, but automatic evaluation measures revealed the opposite preference. This suggests that automatic evaluation is sensitive to co-occurrence between stimuli more than to the relation between the stimuli, and that relational information has a stronger influence on deliberate evaluation than on automatic evaluation. These conclusions support the associative-propositional evaluation model (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006), and add evidence regarding the sensitivity of the evaluative-conditioning effect to relational information.