Unspoken Politics
Implicit Attitudes and Political Thinking
Cambridge Studies in Public Opinion and Political Psychology Series

This book explains why people acquire implicit attitudes, how they affect political thinking, and where in the mass public they have their strongest - and weakest - influences. A theoretically ambitious book, Unspoken Politics establishes that implicit attitudes exist outside the tightly controlled confines of the laboratory, showing that they emerge in a public opinion survey setting, which underlines their real-world impact. It also lays bare, in painstaking detail, the mechanics of a leading measure of implicit attitudes, the implicit association test (IAT). Accordingly, it outlines the strengths and limitations of this measure, while providing an illustration of how to develop an IAT for one's own purposes. By explaining how to analyze and interpret the data produced by the IAT, this book leads to a better understanding of people's unspoken cognitions and the impacts these have on the politics that individuals openly profess.

1. Implicit thoughts, explicit decisions; 2. Two ways of thinking, two types of attitudes; 3. Implicit expectations and explicit political reasoning; 4. Ghost in the associative machine; 5. Unstated: the measurement of implicit attitudes; 6. Incognito: the subconscious nature of implicit expectations; 7. In deliberation's shadow: education, (un)awareness, and implicit attitudes; 8. In black and white: race, group position, and implicit attitudes in politics; 9. Conclusion: implicit attitudes and explicit politics; Note on the studies; References.

Efrén Pérez is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science of Vanderbilt University, Tennessee. His research uses psychological insights to investigate the political attitudes and behaviors of US racial and ethnic groups. Substantively, he studies implicit political cognition, group identity, and language and political thinking. Methodologically, he designs and implements experiments, especially in the realm of racial and ethnic politics. He has published articles on these topics in the American Journal of Political Science, Political Analysis, and Political Behavior. His research on implicit cognition is a recipient of the Lucius Barker Award for the best paper on race/ethnicity and politics at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.