Bertram Gawronski

University of Texas at Austin | UT · Department of Psychology

Claims about unawareness are abundant in attitude research. The current article provides an analysis of evidence regarding three aspects of an attitude for which people may lack awareness: (1) the attitude itself, (2) its environmental causes, and (3) its behavioral effects. Our analysis reveals that, despite widespread claims of unawareness of the...

A large body of research has investigated responses to artificial scenarios (e.g., trolley problem) where maximizing beneficial outcomes for the greater good (utilitarianism) conflicts with adherence to moral norms (deontology). The CNI model is a computational model that quantifies sensitivity to consequences for the greater good ( C), sensitivity...

Recent years have seen a surge in research on why people fall for misinformation and what could be done about it. Drawing on a framework that conceptualizes truth judgments of true and false information as a signal-detection problem, the current article identifies three inaccurate assumptions in the public and scientific discourse about misinformat...

We propose a conceptual framework for misinformation interventions based on Signal Detection Theory. We highlight that different factors can lead people to fall for misinformation and call for interventions to be tailored to these factors.

Self-report measures directly ask respondents to report their mental content such as thoughts and feelings. By contrast, implicit measures aim to assess thoughts and feelings via performance indicators (for example, response times, error rates and response frequencies) under conditions that favor automatic processing. Implicit measures are now wide...

An analysis drawing on Signal Detection Theory suggests that people may fall for misinformation because they are unable to discern true from false information (truth insensitivity) or because they tend to accept information with a particular slant regardless of whether it is true or false (belief bias). Three preregistered experiments with particip...

The current chapter provides an overview of research on responses in moral dilemmas where maximization of outcomes for the greater good (utilitarianism) conflicts with adherence to moral norms (deontology). Expanding on a description of the traditional paradigm to study moral-dilemma judgments (i.e., the trolley problem), the chapter reviews the mo...

An analysis drawing on Signal Detection Theory suggests that people may fall for misinformation because they are unable to discern true from false information (truth insensitivity) or because they tend to accept information with a particular slant regardless of whether it is true or false (belief bias). Three preregistered experiments with particip...

Dual-process theories propose that judgments and behavior can be understood as the product of two (sets of) qualitatively distinct processes, one being characterized by features of automatic processing and the other by features of controlled processing. This chapter provides an overview of dual-process theories in social psychology, integrating bot...

References to implicit bias are abundant in initiatives to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Common claims about implicit bias are that it is widespread (Greenwald et al., 2022) and pervasive (Nosek et al., 2007); that everyone has it (Staats, 2016); and that it is a major obstacle to DEI in virtually all aspects of life, including o...

Despite people’s capacity for both good and evil, scant research has jointly examined the relations of affiliative and aversive traits with moral-dilemma judgments. Using the CNI model of moral-dilemma judgments, this preregistered exploratory study examined associations of aversive traits (Dark Tetrad comprising Machiavellianism, narcissism, psych...

Research by Wegner et al. (1981) suggests that incriminating innuendo in questions can negatively affect attitudes and opinions. Two preregistered studies (N = 506) provide a close replication of Study 1 of Wegner et al., additionally testing whether question-innuendo effects are moderated by partisanship. Replicating the original findings of Wegne...

Past research suggests that uncertainty reduces preference for utilitarian over deontological responses in moral dilemmas. The objective of the current research was to disentangle the possible mechanisms through which uncertainty shapes moral-dilemma responses. Using the CNI model of moral decision-making, we examined if uncertainty influences mora...

Whereas norm-conforming (deontological) judgments have been claimed to be rooted in automatic emotional responses, outcome-maximizing (utilitarian) judgments are assumed to require reflective reasoning. Using the CNI model to disentangle factors underlying moral-dilemma judgments, the current research investigated effects of thinking about reasons...

Misinformation represents one of the greatest challenges for the functioning of societies in the information age. Drawing on a signal-detection framework, the current research investigated two distinct aspects of misinformation susceptibility: truth sensitivity, conceptualized as accurate discrimination between true and false information, and parti...

In the current chapter, we illustrate the value of a mathematical modeling approach in understanding individual differences in moral dilemma judgments. Toward this end, we first explain the traditional approach to studying moral dilemma judgments and its limitations. We then describe the CNI model of moral decision-making (Gawronski, Armstrong, Con...

This document is provides supplemental information about two unpublished studies that are related to: Gawronski, B., Ng, N. L., & Luke, D. M. (in press). Truth sensitivity and partisan bias in responses to misinformation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

The "drunk utilitarian" phenomenon suggests that people are more likely to accept harm for the greater good when they are under the influence of alcohol. This phenomenon conflicts with the ideas that (1) acceptance of pro-sacrificial harm requires inhibitory control of automatic emotional responses to the idea of causing harm and (2) alcohol impair...

Adaptive behavior requires that organisms learn not only which stimuli tend to co-occur (e.g., whether stimulus A co-occurs with unpleasant stimulus B), but also how co-occurring stimuli are related (e.g., whether A starts or stops B). In a preregistered study (N=200 adults), we investigated whether sleep would promote adaptive evaluative choices r...

Joshua Greene has argued that the empirical findings of cognitive science have implications for ethics. In particular, he has argued (1) that people's deontological judgments in response to trolley problems are strongly influenced by at least one morally irrelevant factor, personal force, and are therefore at least somewhat unreliable, and (2) that...

Dual-process and single-process theories lead to conflicting predictions about whether debunking messages negating a state of affairs should change responses on implicit measures in a manner intended by the message. Two preregistered studies (N1 = 550; N2 = 880) tested these predictions using official health information from the U.S. Centers for Di...

A growing line of research suggests that disagreement in moral-dilemma judgments may be rooted in basic personality traits. Using the CNI model, two preregistered studies (N = 490) aimed to replicate findings of prior exploratory research on relations between the Big Five and sensitivity to consequences (C), sensitivity to moral norms (N), and gene...

People can behave in a biased manner without being aware that their behavior is biased, an idea commonly referred to as implicit bias. Research on implicit bias has been heavily influenced by implicit measures, in that implicit bias is often equated with bias on implicit measures. Drawing on a definition of implicit bias as an unconscious effect of...

We are pleased about the considerable interest in our target article and that there is overwhelming agreement with our central thesis that, if the term implicit is understood as unconscious in reference to bias, implicit bias (IB) should not be equated with bias on implicit measures (BIM). We are also grateful for the insightful commentaries, which...

Research suggests that evaluations of an object can be jointly influenced by (1) the mere co-occurrence of the object with a pleasant or unpleasant stimulus (e.g., mere co-occurrence of object A and negative event B) and (2) the object's specific relation to the co-occurring stimulus (e.g., object A starts vs. stops negative event B). Three experim...

Various areas in psychology are interested in whether specific processes underlying judgments and behavior operate in an automatic or non-automatic fashion. In social psychology, valuable insights can be gained from evidence on whether and how judgments and behavior under suboptimal processing conditions differ from judgments and behavior under opt...

A substantial body of research suggests that perceivers spontaneously draw inferences from observed behaviors even when they do not have the intention to form a social impression. Such unintentional inferences have been found to give rise to impressions of other people’s traits (i.e., spontaneous trait inference; see Uleman, Newman, & Moskowitz, 19...

Although moral dilemma judgments are influenced by a variety of situational factors, there is evidence for considerable disagreement between individuals. Using the CNI model to disentangle (1) sensitivity to consequences, (2) sensitivity to moral norms, and (3) general preference for inaction versus action in responses to moral dilemmas, the curren...

Drawing on moral philosophy, research in moral psychology has used hypothetical sacrificial dilemmas to understand how moral judgments are made by laypeople. Although heavily influential, a frequent question raised is whether responses to hypothetical scenarios are informative about instances of morally relevant behavior. Using the CNI model to qua...

Based on a review of several "anomalies" in research using implicit measures, Machery (2021) dismisses the modal interpretation of participant responses on implicit measures and, by extension, the value of implicit measures. We argue that the reviewed findings are anomalies only for specific-influential but long-contested-accounts that treat respon...

A major question in clinical and moral psychology concerns the nature of the commonly presumed association between psychopathy and moral judgment. The current preregistered study (N = 443) aimed to address this question by examining the relation between psychopathy and responses to moral dilemmas pitting consequences for the greater good against ad...

Previous research suggests that individuals who prefer deontological over utilitarian choices in moral dilemmas are perceived to have stronger moral character than individuals who show the reverse preference. To gain deeper insights into the link between moral choices and moral impressions, the current research used a formal modeling approach to ex...

Research across many disciplines seeks to understand how misinformation spreads with a view towards limiting its impact. One important question in this research is how people determine whether a given piece of news is real or fake. The current article discusses the value of Signal Detection Theory (SDT) in disentangling two distinct aspects in the...

Research suggests that evaluations of an object can be simultaneously influenced by (1) the mere co-occurrence of the object with a pleasant or unpleasant stimulus (e.g., mere co-occurrence of object A and negative event B) and (2) the object's particular relation to the co-occurring stimulus (e.g., object A starts vs. stops negative event B). Usin...

The “drunk utilitarian” phenomenon suggests that people are more likely to accept harm for the greater good when they are under the influence of alcohol. This phenomenon conflicts with the ideas that (1) acceptance of pro-sacrificial harm requires inhibitory control of automatic emotional responses to the idea of causing harm and (2) alcohol impair...

Research suggests that people sometimes perceive a relationship between stimuli when no such relationship exists (i.e., illusory correlation). Illusory-correlation effects are thought to play a central role in the formation of stereotypes and evaluations of minority versus majority groups, often leading to less favorable impressions of minorities....

Many real-world dilemmas involve disagreement about whether decisions should follow moral norms in an unconditional manner (deontology) or be based on the consequences for the greater good (utilitarianism). To examine how political ideology may account for some of these disagreements, the current research used a formal modeling approach to investig...

Pennycook and Rand (2021) argue that lack of cognitive reflection is a major cause of fake-news susceptibility, and that recent evidence contradicts the idea that people fall for fake news because of partisan bias. Although the proposed role of cognitive reflection is consistent with the evidence reviewed by the authors, their dismissal of partisan...

The positivity-familiarity effect refers to the phenomenon that positive affect increases the likelihood that people judge a stimulus as familiar. Drawing on the assumption that positivity-familiarity effects result from a common misattribution mechanism that is shared with conceptually similar effects (e.g., fluency-familiarity effects), we invest...

Research suggests that evaluative responses to an object can be jointly influenced by the mere co-occurrence of the object with a pleasant or unpleasant stimulus (e.g., mere co-occurrence of object A with unpleasant event B) and the qualitative relation of the object to that stimulus (e.g., object A starts vs. stops unpleasant event B). Expanding o...

Research on moral dilemma judgment suggests that higher levels of psychopathy are associated with a greater preference for utilitarian over deontological judgments. The current research investigated whether this association reflects (1) differences in the understanding of what society considers right or wrong or (2) differences in personal standard...

Evaluative conditioning is one of the most widely studied procedures for establishing and changing attitudes. The surveillance task is a highly cited evaluative-conditioning paradigm and one that is claimed to generate attitudes without awareness. The potential for evaluative-conditioning effects to occur without awareness continues to fuel concept...

The year 2020 marks the 25th anniversary of two seminal publications that have set the foundation for an exponentially growing body of research using implicit measures: Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, and Williams's (1995) work using evaluative priming to measure racial attitudes, and Greenwald and Banaji's (1995) review of implicit social cognition resear...

The CNI model of moral decision-making is a formal model that quantifies (1) sensitivity to consequences, (2) sensitivity to moral norms, and (3) general preference for inaction versus action in responses to moral dilemmas. Based on a critique of the CNI model's conceptual assumptions, properties of the moral dilemmas for research using the CNI mod...

The science behind implicit bias tests (e.g., Implicit Association Test) has become the target of increased criticism. However, policy-makers seeking to combat discrimination care about reducing bias in people's actual behaviors, not about changing a person's score on an implicit bias test. In line with this argument, we postulate that scientific c...

Research on contextualized attitude change suggests that, even when counterattitudinal information effectively influences evaluations in the context in which this information was learned, previously formed attitudes sometimes continue to determine evaluations in any other context (contextual renewal). Expanding on evidence for contextual renewal in...

What is the status of research on implicit bias? In light of meta-analyses revealing ostensibly low average correlations between implicit measures and behavior, as well as various other psychometric concerns, criticism has become ubiquitous. We argue that while there are significant challenges and ample room for improvement, research on the causes,...

Although stereotypes and prejudice are commonly regarded as conceptually distinct but related constructs, previous research remains silent on the processes underlying their relation. Applying the balance-congruity principle (Greenwald et al., 2002) to the concepts (1) group, (2) valence, and (3) attribute, we argue that the valence of attributes co...

Typical moral dilemmas pitting the consequences of a given action against the action's consistency with moral norms confound several determinants of moral judgments. Dissociating these determinants, the CNI model allows researchers to quantify sensitivity to consequences, sensitivity to norms, and general preference for inaction over action regardl...

We leverage the notion that abstraction enables prediction to generate novel insights and hypotheses for the literatures on attitudes and mate preferences. We suggest that ideas about liking (e.g., evaluations of categories or overall traits) are more abstract than experiences of liking (e.g., evaluations of particular exemplars), and that ideas ab...

Academic life is full of learning, excitement, and discovery. However, academics also experience professional challenges at various points in their career, including repeated rejection, impostor syndrome, and burnout. These negative experiences are rarely talked about publicly, creating a sense of loneliness and isolation for people who presume the...

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is one of the most widely-studied procedures for establishing and changing attitudes. The surveillance-task (Olson & Fazio, 2001) is a highly cited EC paradigm, and one that is claimed to generate attitudes without awareness. The potential for EC effects to occur without awareness continues to fuel conceptual, theoretic...

The positivity-familiarity effect suggests that people use positive affect as a cue to answer the question of whether they have encountered a stimulus before. Five experiments investigated this effect under various conditions. Positivity-familiarity effects were obtained irrespective of whether the task context suggested a correct answer to the que...

Evaluative priming is based on the notion that evaluative classifications of target stimuli are faster (vs. slower) when they are preceded by a prime stimulus of the same (vs. opposite) valence. Although evaluative priming is widely used as an implicit measure of evaluation, there is no common procedure for the treatment of response-latency outlier...

Counter to the lay belief that power corrupts people's sense of morality, social psychological theories suggest that the effects of power on moral judgment are rather complex and multifaceted. To test competing predictions derived from these theories, five experiments used the CNI model to investigate whether power affects responses to moral dilemm...

The notion of lateral attitude change (LAC) suggests that counterattitudinal information about a focal object can influence attitudes toward related objects. Generalization occurs when change in attitudes toward a focal object is accompanied by change in attitudes toward related objects. Displacement occurs when attitudes toward related objects cha...

Past studies of backward evaluative conditioning (EC) have found an assimilation effect, in that neutral conditional stimuli (CS) were found to acquire the valence of co-occurring unconditional stimuli (US). Recent studies employing a concurrent forward and backward conditioning paradigm with instructions suggesting a contrastive relation between t...

We identify several ongoing debates related to implicit measures, surveying prominent views and considerations in each. First, we summarize the debate regarding whether performance on implicit measures is explained by conscious or unconscious representations. Second, we discuss the cognitive structure of the operative constructs: are they associati...

According to the principle of utilitarianism, the moral status of an action depends on its consequences for the greater good; the principle of deontology states that the moral status of an action depends on its consistency with moral norms. Previous research suggests that processing moral dilemmas in a foreign language influences utilitarian and de...

Moral dilemma judgements frequently involve decisions where moral norms and the greater good are in conflict. The current preregistered study tested the effect of the steroid hormone testosterone on moral dilemma judgements using a double-blind administration of testosterone or placebo. Counter to predictions, testosterone administration led to inc...

Skepticism about the explanatory value of implicit bias in understanding social discrimination has grown considerably. The current article argues that both the dominant narrative about implicit bias as well as extant criticism are based on a selective focus on particular findings that fails to consider the broader literature on attitudes and implic...

Dual-process theories of evaluative learning suggest that evaluative representations can be formed via two functionally distinct mechanisms: automatic formation of associative links between co-occurring events (associative learning) and non-automatic generation and truth assessment of mental propositions about the relation between stimuli (proposit...

Amodio [1] argues that social cognition research has for many decades relied on imprecise dual-process models that build on questionable assumptions about how people learn and represent information. He presents an alternative framework for explaining social behavior as the product of multiple dissociable memory systems, based on the idea that cogni...

In contrast to the reliance on self-reports in explicit measures, implicit measures infer mental contents from responses on performance-based tasks. The current chapter provides an introduction to implicit measures, their use in basic and applied psychology, and the theoretical meaning of their measurement outcomes. Expanding on an overview of avai...

Expanding on conflicting theoretical conceptualizations of implicit bias, 6 studies tested the effectiveness of different procedures to increase acknowledgment of harboring biases against minorities. Participants who predicted their responses toward pictures of various minority groups on future implicit association tests (IATs) showed increased ali...

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is defined as the change in the evaluation of a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to its pairing with a positive or negative unconditioned stimulus (US). According to the associative-propositional evaluation (APE) model, EC effects can be the result of two functionally distinct learning mechanisms: associative and propositi...

Previous research has shown that changes in the evaluation of an attitude object can be limited to the context in which counterattitudinal information was learned. To account for these findings, it has been proposed that exposure to expectancy-violating information enhances attention to context, which leads to an integration of the context into the...

Negative information tends to dominate positive information across many domains. However, previous research did not find any evidence for valence asymmetries in the violation of expectancies. The current research tested whether negativity bias in expectancy-violation depends on the amount of prior information that is available about a target. Drawi...

The current research tested the validity of the semantic misattribution procedure (SMP)—a variant of the affect misattribution procedure—as an implicit measure of gender stereotyping. In three studies (N = 604), prime words of gender-stereotypical occupations (e.g., nurse, doctor) influenced participants’ guesses of whether unknown Chinese ideograp...

This chapter provides an overview of theories, methods, key findings, and controversies in research on implicit social cognition. We start by introducing the conceptual origins of implicit social cognition, definitions of the term “implicit,” and the most important measurement instruments. We further review research on dissociations between implici...

The desire to maintain consistency between cognitions has been recognized by many psychologists as an important human motive. Research on this topic has been highly influential in a variety of areas of social cognition, including attitudes, person perception, prejudice and stereotyping, and self-evaluation. In his seminal work on cognitive dissonan...

The current chapter reviews the findings of an ongoing research program suggesting that changes in attitudes can be limited to the context in which counterattitudinal information was learned. The reviewed findings indicate that, although counterattitudinal information may effectively influence evaluations in the context in which this information wa...

Effects of incidental emotions on moral dilemma judgments have garnered interest because they demonstrate the context-dependent nature of moral decision-making. Six experiments (N = 727) investigated the effects of incidental happiness, sadness, and anger on responses in moral dilemmas that pit the consequences of a given action for the greater goo...

The present chapter provides a theory-based analysis of East-West differences in context effects on evaluative responses. Drawing on documented cultural differences in social cognition and a recently proposed representational theory of contextualized evaluation, we discuss how cultural differences in attention and thinking styles may influence the...

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is defined as the change in the evaluation of a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to its pairing with a valenced unconditioned stimulus (US). Expanding on the debate between dual-process and propositional accounts, two studies investigated the relative effectiveness of counter-conditioning and counter-instructions in revers...

The distinction between utilitarianism and deontology has become a prevailing framework for conceptualizing moral judgment. According to the principle of utilitarianism, the morality of an action depends on its outcomes. In contrast, the principle of deontology states that the morality of an action depends on its consistency with moral norms. To id...

Research on moral dilemma judgments has been fundamentally shaped by the distinction between utilitarianism and deontology. According to the principle of utilitarianism, the moral status of behavioral options depends on their consequences; the principle of deontology states that the moral status of behavioral options depends on their consistency wi...

Previous research has shown that changes in automatic evaluations can be limited to the context in which counterattitudinal information was acquired. This effect has been attributed to enhanced attention to context cues during the encoding of expectancy-violating counterattitudinal information. Drawing on previous evidence for cultural differences...

Research on implicit evaluation has yielded mixed results with some studies suggesting that implicit evaluations are relatively resistant to change and others showing that implicit evaluations can change rapidly in response to new information. To reconcile these findings, it has been suggested that changes in implicit evaluations can be limited to...

A common assumption about implicit measures is that they reflect early experiences, whereas explicit measures are assumed to reflect recent experiences. This assumption subsumes two distinct hypotheses: (1) implicit measures are more resistant to situationally induced changes than explicit measures; (2) individual differences on implicit measures a...