696 GAWRONSKI AND BODENHAUSEN For exa ntiveCLaDoatiomidcntificsanadd h text in which it is e This "This Afr on behaved in that implicit don't like this highly sensitive the mencan person"o non ve proposit Schalle Park. &Mueller.2003:Wittenb ink.Judd.&Park d on the their vatio rather than dec rease as a function of cognitiv high level nd implicit attitudes inc c ac on tn amount of cognitive otten ege will likely produce a negative affective reaction reeard ment reeardine the momentarily considered set of propositions less of t which the nding egg i Attitudes as Online Constructions th this article. s are no c.g..Schwarz Bohn 2001Tc 1978:Wilson Unconscious Attitude plied bythe A final foundati question concems the potential unc and prop tonal pro evaluations of an attitu ucedintharthepmoposnioimpiCno ered to be Th roots in Greenwald and Banaji's (1995)definitiono The APE one's aut model deviatesfrom this ibility tha mined a prior.Rather.the 2005se so Cle Jimenez.2002).we assume that people ge nt.and thi nay char ents (Ga onski.Hofmann. .h pres cat deal of stability in ud have arg whe the texts.Thus. even thoug evaluative judgr ents sition on the f this ropositions that might be releva ings by LeB the construction the constru 10 aroue that a s on their feelings ward the attitude obie t in the course o ciative memory.N udgment (for simi ee Nie ting str e of associations in me tion instructions should leave correlations between explicit and As such.different sets of input stimuli may activate differen implicit attitudes unaffectedtion between explicit and implicit attitudes should actually in￾crease (rather than decrease) as a function of cognitive elaboration. For example, if increased cognitive elaboration identifies an addi￾tional proposition (e.g., “This African American person behaved in a hostile manner”) that resolves the inconsistency among a propo￾sitionally transformed affective reaction (e.g., “I don’t like this African American person”); other, nonevaluative propositions (e.g., “African Americans are a disadvantaged minority group”); and propositional evaluations of other attitude objects (e.g., “It is bad to evaluate members of disadvantaged minority groups nega￾tively”), the relation between explicit and implicit attitudes should actually increase rather than decrease as a function of cognitive elaboration. In other words, whether the relation between explicit and implicit attitudes increases or decreases as a function of cognitive elaboration does not depend on the amount of cognitive elaboration per se; rather, it is a function of a consistency assess￾ment regarding the momentarily considered set of propositions. Attitudes as Online Constructions Although attitudes have traditionally been regarded as stable evaluative representations of an attitude object residing in long￾term memory, some researchers have argued that attitudes are not merely retrieved from memory but rather are constructed on the spot (e.g., Schwarz & Bohner, 2001; Tesser, 1978; Wilson & Hodges, 1992; see also Bassili & Brown, 2005). A similar assump￾tion is also implied by the APE model. However, the notion of attitude construction has substantially different meanings for as￾sociative and propositional processes. For propositional processes, attitudes can be considered to be constructed in that the propositional implication of one’s automatic affective reaction can be regarded as either true or false, depending on the other propositions that one simultaneously considers in forming an evaluative judgment. That is, changes in the set of momentarily considered propositions can influence whether the propositional implication of one’s automatic affective reaction is considered valid or invalid. As such, evaluative judgments result￾ing from propositional processes can be regarded as constructed because they are not determined a priori. Rather, the truth value of a given propositional evaluation depends on its consistency with the set of other propositions that are currently considered to be relevant, and this set may change as a function of various factors (e.g., cognitive elaboration). Notwithstanding these factors, how￾ever, there can nevertheless be a great deal of stability in evalua￾tive judgments, to the extent that the set of relevant propositions that one considers in forming an evaluative judgment is consistent across contexts. Thus, even though evaluative judgments resulting from propositional processes can be regarded as constructed, the APE model does not preclude the possibility of attitudinal stability or rigidity on the propositional level. For associative processes, attitudes might also be considered to be constructed. However, in contrast to the active notion implied for the construction of evaluative judgments, the construction process for associative evaluations is rather passive. As we have outlined, we argue that automatic affective reactions depend on processes of pattern activation in associative memory. Moreover, these processes of pattern activation depend on (a) external input stimuli and (b) the preexisting structure of associations in memory. As such, different sets of input stimuli may activate different associative patterns for a given attitude object. Accordingly, the same attitude object may be evaluated differently as a function of the particular context in which it is encountered. This assumption is consistent with research showing that implicit attitudes are highly sensitive to the particular context in which an attitude object is encountered (e.g., Barden, Maddux, Petty, & Brewer, 2004; Schaller, Park, & Mueller, 2003; Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 2001). From this perspective, implicit attitudes, or associative evaluations, can be regarded as constructed on the spot because their activation depends not only on the preexisting structure of associations in memory but also on the particular set of input stimuli. As with evaluative judgments, however, associative eval￾uations can also be quite stable, such that they show a high level of temporal consistency if the activation patterns elicited when one encounters the attitude object are themselves robustly stable. A rotten egg will likely produce a negative affective reaction regard￾less of the particular context within which the offending egg is encountered. From a general perspective, temporal consistency of associative evaluations reflects the chronic or dispositional aspect that is often attributed to attitudes. We consider the issue of temporal stability of attitudes in more detail in the remainder of this article. Unconscious Attitudes A final foundational question concerns the potential uncon￾sciousness of implicit attitudes. Some researchers have argued that implicit attitudes reflect unconscious evaluations of an attitude object, whereas explicit attitudes reflect their conscious counter￾parts (e.g., Banaji, Lemm, & Carpenter, 2001). This assumption has its roots in Greenwald and Banaji’s (1995) definition of implicit attitudes as “introspectively unidentified (or inaccurately identified) traces of past experience” (p. 5) that mediate overt responses. The APE model deviates from this contention. Al￾though we do not rule out the possibility that certain affective reactions are below the threshold of experiential awareness (e.g., Winkielman, Berridge, & Wilbarger, 2005; see also Cleeremans & Jime´nez, 2002), we assume that people generally do have some degree of conscious access to their automatic affective reactions and that they tend to rely on these affective reactions in making evaluative judgments (Gawronski, Hofmann, & Wilbur, in press; Schimmack & Crites, 2005). To be sure, they also sometimes reject these automatic evaluations as a valid basis for an evaluative judgment. As we have argued, whether people consider their automatic affective reaction to be a valid basis for an evaluative judgment depends on the consistency of this evaluation with other propositions that might be relevant for an evaluative judgment. These assumptions about the consciousness of implicit atti￾tudes—or automatic affective reactions—are consistent with re￾cent findings by LeBel and Gawronski (2006), who found that correlations between explicit and implicit attitudes significantly increased (from r
.19 to r
.51) when participants were asked to focus on their feelings toward the attitude object in the course of making an evaluative judgment (for similar findings, see Nier, 2005). If implicit attitudes are truly unconscious, such introspec￾tion instructions should leave correlations between explicit and implicit attitudes unaffected. 696 GAWRONSKI AND BODENHAUSEN