Implicit methods for studying ethnic attitudes. Experience in experimental researches
On 24th of October has been held seminar from series "Culture Matters" with the presentation of Irina Plotka, PhD, Professor at Baltic Psychology and Management University College (Riga, Latvia), on following topic: "Implicit methods for studying ethnic attitudes. Experience in experimental researches".
Irina Plotka and her colleagues of Baltic Psychology and Management University College (BPMUC) and doctoral students of Daugavpils University in conducted studies raise the question of formation, realization and change of ethnic attitudes (which are developing during all life under the influence of family, cultural traditions and norms of society, refracted through the personal experience of a particular person). Authors believe that these attitudes should be seen not only from the aspect of social interaction, but also from those mental processes, emotional and cognitive, which lead a person to a definite decision about the object of an attitude.
Implicit methods are those tools with which it is possible to explore automatic, unconscious reactions caused by attitudes, and separate them from the more conscious reactions. I. Plotka and colleagues in their studies use following methods: the procedure of unconscious emotional priming (UEP) and the Implicit Association Test (IAT).
With the help of reaction times (RT), in different order priming effects, strength and direction and preferences of ethnic attitudes were investigated on different stimulus asynchrony times. The influence of recent episodic events, affectively meaningful for the participants, on RT and implicit attitudes was found, regardless of their emotional valence.
Further studies of the connection of recent episodic events and implicit attitude measurements will develop new concepts of mental attitude representations, which will take into account the interaction of the newly acquired episodic and previously acquired experience, automatically activated in the semantic memory.