Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, TX, USA.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2011 Nov;101(5):993-1011. doi: 10.1037/a0024061.
Five studies develop and examine the predictive validity of an implicit measure of the preference for physical attractiveness in a romantic partner. Three hypotheses were generally supported. First, 2 variants of the go/no-go association task revealed that participants, on average, demonstrate an implicit preference (i.e., a positive spontaneous affective reaction) for physical attractiveness in a romantic partner. Second, these implicit measures were not redundant with a traditional explicit measure: The correlation between these constructs was .00 on average, and the implicit measures revealed no reliable sex differences, unlike the explicit measure. Third, explicit and implicit measures exhibited a double dissociation in predictive validity. Specifically, explicit preferences predicted the extent to which attractiveness was associated with participants' romantic interest in opposite-sex photographs but not their romantic interest in real-life opposite-sex speed-daters or confederates. Implicit preferences showed the opposite pattern. This research extends prior work on implicit processes in romantic relationships and offers the first demonstration that any measure of a preference for a particular characteristic in a romantic partner (an implicit measure of physical attractiveness, in this case) predicts individuals' evaluation of live potential romantic partners.
五项研究开发并检验了对浪漫伴侣中身体吸引力偏好的内隐测量的预测效度。三个假设得到了普遍支持。首先，两种变体的 Go/No-Go 联想任务表明，参与者平均表现出对浪漫伴侣中身体吸引力的内隐偏好（即积极的自发情感反应）。其次，这些内隐测量与传统的外显测量并不冗余：这些结构之间的相关系数平均为 0.00，而且内隐测量没有显示出可靠的性别差异，与外显测量不同。第三，外显和内隐测量在预测效度上表现出双重分离。具体来说，外显偏好预测了吸引力与参与者对异性照片的浪漫兴趣之间的关联程度，但不预测他们对现实生活中的异性速配者或同伙的浪漫兴趣。内隐偏好则表现出相反的模式。这项研究扩展了先前关于浪漫关系中内隐过程的研究，并首次证明了对浪漫伴侣中特定特征的任何偏好的衡量标准（在这种情况下是对身体吸引力的内隐衡量标准）都可以预测个体对潜在浪漫伴侣的评价。
