Assessing children’s implicit attitudes using the Affect Misattribution Procedure

WILLIAMS, Amanda, STEELE, Jennifer R and LIPMAN, Corey (2016). Assessing children’s implicit attitudes using the Affect Misattribution Procedure. Journal of Cognition and Development, 17 (3), 505-525.

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Abstract

In the current research we examined whether the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP; Payne et al., 2005) could be successfully adapted as an implicit measure of children’s attitudes. We tested this possibility in three studies with 5 to 10 year old children. In Study 1 we found evidence that children misattribute affect elicited by attitudinally positive (e.g., cute animals) and negative (e.g., aggressive animals) primes to neutral stimuli (inkblots). In Study 2, we found that, as expected, children’s responses following flower and insect primes were moderated by gender. Girls (but not boys) were more likely to judge inkblots as pleasant when they followed flower primes. Children in Study 3 showed predicted affect misattribution following happy as compared to sad face primes. In addition, children’s responses on this child-friendly AMP predicted their self-reported empathy; the greater children’s spontaneous misattribution of affect following happy and sad primes, the more children reported feeling the joy and pain of others. These studies provide evidence that the AMP can be adapted as an implicit measure of children’s attitudes and the results of Study 3 offer novel insight into individual differences in children’s affective responses to the emotional expressions of others

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Accepted for publication June 2015
Research Institute, Centre or Group - Does NOT include content added after October 2018:	Cultural Communication and Computing Research Institute > Communication and Computing Research Centre
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2015.1061527
Page Range:	505-525
Depositing User:	Amanda Williams
Date Deposited:	10 Jun 2015 11:15
Last Modified:	18 Mar 2021 00:23
URI:	https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/10195

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