Implicit Stereotype Content: Mixed Stereotypes can be Measured with the Implicit Association Test

Abstract: According to the Stereotype Content Model (SCM; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick & Xu, 2002), stereotype content can be mixed in terms of diverging evaluation on the warmth and competence dimensions. The present study is the first to demonstrate this with implicit measures. 85 participants completed one of two Implicit Association Tests (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee & Schwartz, 1998), that measured either their associations of lawyers and preschool teachers with warmth or with competence. The participants also completed explicit measures of stereotypes. The results support the SCM, showing that lawyers were implicitly and explicitly associated with less warmth, but with higher competence, relative to preschool teachers. This also illustrates that a single stereotype - IAT may not always be fully representative of stereotype content.