Effects on the Affect Misattribution Procedure are strongly moderated by influence awareness

Abstract

The Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) is used in many areas of psychological science based on the assumption that it not only taps into attitudes and biases but does so without a person’s awareness. Across eight preregistered studies (N = 1603) plus meta-analyses, we reexamined the ‘implicitness’ of AMP effects, and in particular, the idea that people are unaware of the prime’s influence on their evaluations. Results indicated that AMP effects and their predictive validity are primarily moderated by a subset of influence-aware trials (within individuals), and high rates of influence awareness (between individuals). Interestingly, an individual’s influence-awareness rate on one AMP predicted how they performed on an earlier AMP, even when the two assessed different attitude domains. Taken together, our results suggest that AMP effects are not implicit in the way that has been claimed, a finding that has implications for the procedure, past findings, and theory. All materials and data are available at osf.io/gv7cm.