Forming implicit and explicit impressions of individuals

We explored how social group cues (e.g., obesity, physical attractiveness) strongly associated with valence affect the formation of attitudes toward individuals. Although much past research has examined explicit attitude formation (e.g., Fiske & Neuberg, 1990), the current work considered how implicit as well as explicit attitudes toward individuals are influenced by these cues. Based on a systems of evaluation perspective (e.g., Rydell & McConnell, 2006; Rydell et al., 2006), we anticipated and found that social group cues had a strong impact on implicit attitude formation in all cases, and on explicit attitude formation when behavioral information about the target was ambiguous. These findings obtained for cues related to obesity (Experiments 1 and 4) and physical attractiveness (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, parallel findings were observed for race, and those holding greater implicit racial prejudice against African-Americans formed more negative implicit attitudes toward a novel African-American target person. Implications for research on attitudes, impression formation, and stigma are discussed.