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7 - Revisiting the Measurement of Group Schemas in Political Science

from Section II - Do Measures of Implicit Bias Predict Cognition and Behavior?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2024

By
Kirill Zhirkov  and
Nicholas A. Valentino
Edited by
Jon A. Krosnick ,
Tobias H. Stark  and
Amanda L. Scott
Jon A. Krosnick
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Tobias H. Stark
Affiliation:
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Amanda L. Scott
Affiliation:
The Strategy Team, Columbus, Ohio
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Summary

While schema theory motivated the original measures of automatic cognitive associations between constructs in memory, researchers soon modified these to explore a different domain: implicit attitudes about social groups that elude standard self-reports. As the so-called implicit attitude revolution gained steam, the original measurement goal got much less attention, especially in political science. We believe the schema concept – automatic cognitive associations between features of an attitude object – continues to hold great value for political psychology. We offer a retrofit of the popular implicit association test (IAT), one more efficient than many lexical tasks, to tap these associations in surveys. The new technique captures the degree to which citizens link ideas about ostensibly group-neutral policies to specific social categories. We use this measurement strategy to explore the psychological mechanisms underlying group centrism in politics, an effort that has been largely abandoned due to measurement difficulties. Results from four studies offer practical suggestions about the application of implicit measures for capturing the automatic ways people link groups to important political objects. We conclude by discussing the broader promise of implicit measurement of group schemas, not just implicit affect, for political psychology.

Keywords

group schemapartisanshipaffective polarizationwelfarepublic opinionimplicit cognitiongenderrace
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Implicit Bias and Racism , pp. 222 - 245
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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