Lundberg Kristjen B, Payne B Keith
Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2014 Jan 29;9(1):e85680. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0085680. eCollection 2014.
Implicit attitudes have been suggested as a key to unlock the hidden preferences of undecided voters. Past research, however, offered mixed support for this hypothesis. The present research used a large nationally representative sample and a longitudinal design to examine the predictive utility of implicit and explicit attitude measures in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. In our analyses, explicit attitudes toward candidates predicted voting better for decided than undecided voters, but implicit candidate attitudes were predictive of voting for both decided and undecided voters. Extending our examination to implicit and explicit racial attitudes, we found the same pattern. Taken together, these results provide convergent evidence that implicit attitudes predict voting about as well for undecided as for decided voters. We also assessed a novel explanation for these effects by evaluating whether implicit attitudes may predict the choices of undecided voters, in part, because they are neglected when people introspect about their confidence. Consistent with this idea, we found that the extremity of explicit but not implicit attitudes was associated with greater confidence. These analyses shed new light on the utility of implicit measures in predicting future behavior among individuals who feel undecided. Considering the prior studies together with this new evidence, the data seem to be consistent that implicit attitudes may be successful in predicting the behavior of undecided voters.
内隐态度被认为是解开未决选民隐藏偏好的关键。然而，过去的研究对这一假设的支持参差不齐。本研究使用了一个具有全国代表性的大样本和纵向设计，来检验2008年美国总统选举中内隐和外显态度测量的预测效用。在我们的分析中，对候选人的外显态度对已决定选民投票的预测比对未决选民更好，但内隐候选人态度对已决定和未决选民的投票都有预测作用。将我们的研究扩展到内隐和外显的种族态度，我们发现了相同的模式。综合来看，这些结果提供了趋同的证据，即内隐态度对未决选民和已决定选民投票的预测效果相当。我们还通过评估内隐态度是否可能部分因为人们在反思自己的信心时被忽视而预测未决选民的选择，来评估对这些影响的一种新解释。与这一观点一致，我们发现外显态度而非内隐态度的极端程度与更大的信心相关。这些分析为内隐测量在预测未决个体未来行为方面的效用提供了新的见解。综合先前的研究和这一新证据，数据似乎一致表明内隐态度可能成功预测未决选民的行为。
