jost_j_t_kay_a_c_thorisdottir_n_social_and_psychological_bas

it need not change much beyond that, and it certainly doesn’t have one-to- one impact on the local and global environment. If implicit evaluations are sensitive to the stamp of culture, then a change of mind must be followed by a change of behavior and a change in the situation, or else implicit–explicit discrepancies will persist.

Conservatives, on the other hand, may be less likely to reject their automatic responses in the first place, less likely to practice egalitarian responses, and thus less likely to modify their automatic preferences for the higherstatus groups. The substantial change in conservatives’ racial attitudes in the ANES data set suggests that ideological differences in explicit racial attitudes have dissipated substantially. If those indeed reflect genuine shifts, then they may be accompanied by increased motivations among conservatives to be racially egalitarian. This increase in motivation could lead to a more consistent practice of egalitarian responses and ultimately to a reduction or elimination of differences in implicit racial biases between liberals and conservatives. Future research will speak to the extent and quality of this social change.

These hypotheses offer bidirectional perspectives on implicit–explicit influence: that changes in explicit preferences can, over time, lead to implicit changes as a cause of implicit–explicit consistency, and that, in the moment, an automatic reaction can either be used or rejected as a basis for generating an explicit report or judgment. At the same time, this chapter may reflect another directional assumption: that ideology shapes explicit orientations about social groups, and not the other way around. However, this need not be the case. Disliked or disadvantaged groups, notably Blacks, gays, and lesbians, are more likely to identify as liberal than conservative. This may be a sign that attitudes about some social groups shape ideological commitments as well. For members of disliked groups, maintaining a positive view of one’s group may favor an ideological belief that the status quo should be replaced with one in which “my group” is better valued (Jost & Thompson, 2000). If this is true, then as social acceptance of a group increases, then so should the conservatism of members within that group, insofar as the groupserving motivation to take on a liberal position for change declines. This is another hypothesis for future study.

CONCLUSION

The fundamental ideological distinction of liberalism–conservatism shapes how individuals orient themselves toward the social world. Preferences for others as members of social groups are markers of such orientations, and both explicit and implicit measures provided the evidence from which we draw several conclusions.

First, liberals both self-report and reveal on implicit measures greater favorability toward groups that are socially disadvantaged than do conservatives. Political ideology also affects the strength of the connection between implicit and explicit social attitudes, but the cause of this relationship is inconclusive. The data might have revealed a difference between liberals and conservatives on self-report measures, but not on measures of automatic preference. That was not what we observed; liberals both deliberately report and automatically reveal less of a preference for the socially privileged than do conservatives. Those who maintain that political conservatism is not linked to differential preferences for advantaged versus disadvantaged groups are obliged to rethink their position based on such data. And, those who believe that liberals are without social preferences or biases are also out of step with what the data show.

The automatic preferences of liberals are discrepant from their selfreported attitudes. In this sense, liberals may possess a more “conflicted stance.” It appears that their explicit egalitarian ideals have not been fully internalized or automatized.

Finally, the most provocative comment we can offer from the evidence concerns the role that liberals play in shaping public opinion about social groups. Using race attitudes as the case in point, we found that the position arrived at by liberals in the 1970s is the position of conservatives today. From this, we put forward the hypothesis, to be assessed in future investigations of other social groups, that liberals lead the way in changing social beliefs and attitudes. In the 19th century, it was the liberals and progressives who first opposed slavery. Decades after the emancipation proclamation, conservatives agreed. The 21st century may be witness to a similar social change in attitudes toward gays and lesbians. In our own data, liberals reveal much greater positivity than conservatives do toward gays and lesbians, both implicitly and explicitly. These ideological differences may not persist forever. Future generations of conservatives, we predict, will come to mirror today’s liberals in attitudes concerning sexual orientation.

The larger point may be a simple one of the empirical evidence backing up a dictionary definition. In the area of attitudes toward social groups, conservatives embody the definition of the term conservative: “favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.” And liberals, explicitly at least, embody liberal: “not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry; favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded” (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 2000). With respect to the preferences that we feel and reveal concerning members of advantaged and disadvantaged groups,

liberals do what by definition they are assumed to do. What we suggest is that conservatives either do not or cannot remain where they are forever, but are bound to follow liberals, however grudgingly, perhaps even without awareness of following at all, because liberals are agents of social change.

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