Personal and social motivation to respond without prejudice: Implications for implicit and explicit attitude and behavior

Individuals may choose to report non-prejudiced attitudes because such attitudes are important to them, or because they think such attitudes are important to others. But can good intentions to be non-prejudiced influence implicit prejudice, which is ordinarily thought to operate outside of conscious control? Two studies investigated the relationship between motivation to respond without prejudice and implicit, explicit, and non-verbally expressed prejudice toward gay men. Two independent sources of motivation to be non-prejudiced were assessed: Motivation stemming from personal standards (i.e., internalized standards important to the self) and motivation stemming from social standards (i.e., external standards important in the environment). Study 1 examined whether motivation is related to implicit and explicit prejudice. Individuals strongly motivated to be non-prejudiced for personal reasons expressed lower prejudice on implicit and explicit measures and exhibited less prejudicial non-verbal responding relative to individuals low in personal motivation. In contrast, social motivation was unrelated to implicit, explicit, and non-verbally expressed prejudice. Study 2 explored the means by which motivation moderates the relationship between implicit and explicit prejudice. Social, but not personal, motivation moderated the relationship between implicit and explicit prejudice. Individuals low in social motivation showed a strong implicit-explicit relationship whereas individuals high in social motivation showed a weak implicit-explicit relationship. Weak relationships between implicit and explicit prejudice may result from attempts to comply with social standards that can be achieved on explicit, controllable measures, but not on implicit, uncontrollable measures. These results suggest that implicit prejudice levels can be modified by individuals motivated to be non-prejudiced, but only if this motivation stems from personal, internal sources. Individuals who are relatively unconcerned with social pressures to be egalitarian tend to provide explicit responses that correspond to their underlying implicit attitudes, whereas those who are very concerned with appearing non-prejudiced to others tend to provide explicit responses that diverge from their underlying implicit attitudes.