Vick’s Final Exam: Using Automatic Associations to Measure Attitude Change
The Michael Vick PETA testing reports are out, and the world is left to wonder – does the man really feel remorse? PETA released Vick’s responses to his final exam questions from his course on animal ethics.
Clearly, Vick is working hard to write the “right” answer to these questions, and some of his answers are on target according to PETA. Okay, but we’re all wondering, “does he really feel it”? The question here runs deeper than explicit answers to questions that Michael knows will have an impact on his immediate living conditions. The broader question is what constitutes true attitude change in a case like this? Do we want a total transformation of attitude toward animals in order to grant Vick our blessings to be positively interactive with animals again? And does total transformation of attitude embody itself in the evocation of real emotion and unconscious thought processes, rather than explicitly expressed conscious attitudes? What we’re asking here is what is the fundamental difference between what someone “says” and what someone “feels” or “just knows”.
At Sentient Decision Science we have a way to measure this – it is called automatic associations – and it is based in the psychological literature on cognitive priming and implicit attitudes. Automatic associations are a prime example of how recent psychological methods can be used to assess the attitudes that people possess but are either unwilling or unable to express. It is a measure of the individual’s unconscious association with a target stimulus.
The method measures emotion and specific attributions that people have toward a target stimulus without asking any explicit questions of the individual. We commonly use this to assess consumer automatic associations with brands, however, in this situation it could be felicitously used to assess Vick’s unconscious attitudes toward animals (or more specifically, Pit Bull Terriers).
There are big questions that are raised by the potential use of implicit methods to assess attitude change. In relation to Vick, I would ask PETA: would you feel more comfortable with Vick’s rehabilitation if his unconscious attitudes were aligned with what he is saying to you on paper? And alternatively, if Vick’s unconscious attitudes toward animals revealed that he still holds strong negative or demeaning associations, how would you assess the success of his rehabilitation? Either way, the method is certainly a way for you to get around the problem of self-presentation biases, which abound in cases like this because of the direct implications that explicit answers have on the future of the individual.
PETA has requested that Vick undergo a brainscan to determine if he is a psychopath and able to feel remorse. The MRI would be testing something very different than what we’re suggesting here. Assuming Vick is not a psychopath and that he actually has the capacity to rehabilitate, there still remains the question of whether his attitude toward animals has fundamentally changed. Automatic associations could assess the degree of unconscious attitude change.
The questions of how this relates to the legal system and the notion of what rehabilitation is in general are enormous (e.g. Do our automatic emotions and unconscious attitudes need to change in order for us to be rehabilitated? Is that possible, and if not, what does that mean for our society?) While any suggestion of an answer to those implications is beyond what I’m hoping to achieve with this initial blog post, I do welcome the discussion on it. Let’s see where the conversation goes.
And PETA, have you considered using automatic associations to test attitude change toward animals?
