IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT ATTITUDE CHANGE 699 ciation task( ereall highly familiar individ In oth ord particip different context cues influ will be the lied to t individ got ac such changes in patter arch sho that sim h ejudice (see Devine,1989 et al.(2001).for with the tv ted an IAT d mplicit preferen for Wes nteraction with ar with the two subcate ies than when they were not primed with that ositive interactions with an African An esting that this effec of EC).it a of the in-gr and out-group categories led to mo ot fo evaluat o the n-roup deper et al.'s priming pr dure invo egory prim ion in terms of the p s tha ent with the notion of diffe tation re t Eu f the tw categon ry priming should lea African rican e to pical implici math (i al int ges in A s elicited by yAfrican American individuals were less neg n particular. hite participants sh family barbeque)tha were p ed in a role th n that i nciden s a function of the context in which his individual is encountere when partic e cted to i with a Whi d with both positive and ar aspects of particip American individual i 2003)parti ants only antici ated rather than interaction 2001 enly pr d by B aL.2004 Maddu of the p ithi ic e for examp of abs cat Bar tha a Bl in a h change ffeci ound that the ented with dress ng the role of a prisoner over ins he same Bla person elicite d implic e for fl the categories in a go/no-go association task (Nosek & Banaji, 2001). It is important to note that the targets used by J. P. Mitchell et al. were all highly familiar individuals. In other words, participants already had a representation of these individuals in their associa￾tive memory, but the particular category applied to these individ￾uals influenced which of the associative patterns got activated. Particularly interesting with regard to the present question is research showing that simply increasing the salience of group categories can influence subsequent associative evaluations (e.g., Ku¨hnen et al., 2001; Pratto & Shih, 2000; J. R. Steele & Ambady, 2006). In a study by Ku¨hnen et al. (2001), for example, German participants were primed with the two subcategories East German and West German and then completed an IAT designed to assess implicit preference for West Germans over East Germans. Overall, the social stereotype of East Germans tends to be negative, whereas the social stereotype of West Germans tends to be posi￾tive. Results indicate that participants exhibited a stronger prefer￾ence for West Germans over East Germans when they were primed with the two subcategories than when they were not primed with the two subcategories. It is interesting that this effect emerged for both East German and West German participants. Hence, activa￾tion of the in-group and out-group categories led to more or less favorable associative evaluations of the in-group, depending on the particular valence of in-group-related associations. Because Ku¨h￾nen et al.’s priming procedure involved a neutral category prime rather than direct priming of positive or negative stereotypes, these results are consistent with the notion of differential pattern acti￾vation. If the two subcategories were not already associated with positive or negative stereotypes in associative memory, simple category priming should leave associative evaluations unaffected. This interpretation is also applicable to a finding by J. R. Steele and Ambady (2006), who found that women showed more gender￾stereotypical implicit attitudes toward arts versus math (i.e., stron￾ger preference for arts over math) when they were primed with gender categories than when they were primed with gender-neutral categories. Additional evidence for changes in pattern activation comes from Wittenbrink et al. (2001), who found that automatic affective reactions elicited by African American individuals were less neg￾ative when the individuals were presented in a positive context (e.g., family barbeque) than when they were presented in a nega￾tive context (e.g., gang incident). These results indicate that the associative pattern that is activated by a given individual can differ as a function of the context in which this individual is encountered. In the present case, one could ague that the associative represen￾tation of African Americans is ambivalent, such that African Americans are associated with both positive and negative aspects. However, which of these aspects gets activated depends on the particular context in which an African American individual is encountered. An interesting extension of Wittenbrink et al.’s (2001) research was recently presented by Barden et al. (2004; see also Maddux, Barden, Brewer, & Petty, 2005). These researchers showed that not the context per se but the social role within a particular context led to changes in automatic evaluations. In one study, for example, Barden et al. found that a Black person presented in a prison context elicited automatic negative reactions when this person was presented with dress suggesting the role of a prisoner. However, the same Black person elicited automatic positive reactions when presented with dress suggesting the role of a lawyer. As with Wittenbrink et al.’s (2001) findings, these results indicate that different context cues influence which associative pattern will be activated for a particular attitude object and that such differences in pattern activation can lead to different associative evaluations of the same attitude object. Most important, such changes in pattern activation seem to be capable of reversing the automatic activation commonly attributed to implicit prejudice (see Devine, 1989; Fiske, 1998), such that the same Black person may activate either a negative or a positive associative evaluation depending on the social role in which this person is encountered. Another study that can be interpreted in terms of differences in pattern activation was conducted by Lowery, Hardin, and Sinclair (2001). These researchers found that mere interaction with an African American experimenter was sufficient to reduce negative associative evaluations of African Americans. It is interesting to note that this effect emerged for European Americans but not for Asian Americans. Even though we cannot rule out the possibility that positive interactions with an African American experimenter may be sufficient to change participants’ associative structure (e.g., by means of EC), it is quite difficult to explain why this effect should emerge only for European Americans, not for Asian Americans (given that the affective quality of the interaction was equal across the two groups of participants). An alternative expla￾nation in terms of the present model is that European Americans and Asian Americans differ with regard to their preexisting asso￾ciative representation regarding African Americans, such that Eu￾ropean Americans’ associative representation is more heteroge￾neous than Asian Americans’ associative representation. Hence, interacting with an African American experimenter may activate an evaluatively different pattern of associations for European Americans, whereas the patterns activated in Asian Americans may be less affected by individual interactions. Additional evidence for changes in pattern activation comes from research on social roles. Richeson and Ambady (2003) dem￾onstrated that anticipated superior and subordinate roles in dyadic interactions with an African American individual influenced par￾ticipants’ associative evaluations of African Americans in general. In particular, White participants showed more negative associative evaluations of African Americans when they anticipated being in a superior role than when they anticipated a subordinate role (see also Richeson & Ambady, 2001). However, situational roles had no influence on associative evaluations of African Americans when participants expected to interact with a White person. From the perspective of the APE model, one could argue that anticipated social roles in interactions with African Americans increased the salience of particular aspects of participants’ associative represen￾tation of African Americans. Because Richeson and Ambady’s (2003) participants only anticipated, rather than actually engaged in, social interaction, it seems unlikely that participants formed completely new associative evaluations. Instead, anticipated roles might have activated those patterns of the preexisting associative representation that provided the best fit to the anticipated role. Several studies have also shown that differences in the interpre￾tation of abstract category labels can change affective responses on the IAT (e.g., Foroni & Mayr, 2005; Govan & Williams, 2004). Govan and Williams (2004), for example, found that the often demonstrated implicit preference for flowers over insects could be reversed when the stimuli in the IAT were unpleasant flowers (e.g., IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT ATTITUDE CHANGE 699