Kish’s Blog

Something I've been thinking about recently is the question of how much of what we think/"know" about ourselves is a consequence of what others have said about us, and how much of it is from first principles. I was surprised when two of my classes this week touched on this question. In my Attitudes and Persuasion seminar, we were discussing the difference between explicit and implicit attitudes, and which one is one's "real" attitude. There is actually no consensus in the field about whether or not explicit and implicit attitudes are even internally represented separately. Explicit attitudes are ones that can be measured using surveys, like Likert scales, and are known to us. Implicit attitudes are commonly measured using the  implicit association test , and use responses that are automatic/out of our control in some way (like muscle activity in the face , heart rate, etc.). There was one study  on racial attitudes that examined body language as well as imp