Mood and Trust in Intuition Interactively Orchestrate Correspondence Between Implicit and Explicit Attitudes

Abstract

The goal of the current research was to subject the prediction that affect and trust in intuition would interactively shape implicit and explicit attitude correspondence to empirical assessment. In four experiments, either trust versus distrust in intuition was measured or manipulated and positive or negative moods were induced. The outcome of interest was correspondence between implicit and explicit academic attitudes (Experiments 1–2) and self-attitudes (Experiments 3–4). As predicted, affect served as information about chronically or temporarily accessible tendencies to trust or distrust their intuitions, with positive affect validating and negative affect invalidating such tendencies, which in turn shaped correspondence between implicit and explicit attitudes. By drawing together these two seemingly unrelated lines of research, these experiments provide important insights into the sometimes mysterious circumstances in which implicit attitudes are translated into explicit attitude reports.