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Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 2005, 46, 361366

Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.

Personality and Social Sciences

The association between implicit and explicit prejudice: the moderating


role of motivation to control prejudiced reactions
NAZAR AKRAMI and BO EKEHAMMAR
Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

Akrami, N. & Ekehammar, B. (2005). The association between implicit and explicit prejudice: the moderating role of motivation to control
prejudiced reactions. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 46, 361366.
The main aim of the present research was to assess the relationship between implicit and explicit ethnic attitude measures and to examine the
impact of motivation to control prejudiced reactions on this relation. Implicit ethnic prejudice was assessed by a response latency measure,
and a self-report modern prejudice scale was used to assess explicit prejudice. The results showed that an association between implicit and
explicit attitudes was observed only when the explicit attitude measure was corrected for motivational bias. The findings are discussed in relation
to previous research reporting either association or dissociation between implicit and explicit attitude measures.
Key words: Implicit prejudice, explicit prejudice, prejudice control.
Nazar Akrami, Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Box 1225, SE-751 42 Uppsala, Sweden. Tel: +46 18 471 15 25; fax: +46 18 471
21 23; e-mail: Nazar.Akrami@psyk.uu.se

INTRODUCTION
Explicit and implicit ethnic attitudes
Greenwald and Banaji (1995) have emphasized the importance
of the distinction between explicit and implicit measures of
attitudes. Explicit attitudes are slow and intentional and
operate in a conscious mode. They can be measured by traditional self-report questionnaires. Implicit attitudes, in contrast, are fast and automatic and operate without intention,
often in an unconscious mode. They are assessed using indirect
measures, like response latency.
Important in the present context is the relationship
between implicit and explicit attitudes. Implicit and explicit
attitudes can be expected to be associated because of their
common root in peoples personal and cultural experiences
and socialization history (e.g., Dovidio, Kawakami, Johnson,
Johnson & Howard, 1997 ) or because implicit attitudes
are in fact internalized explicit attitudes (e.g., Brauer, Wasel
& Niedenthal, 2000). However, Devine (1989) argued that
because stereotypes, unlike personal beliefs, are culturally
shared, they can be automatically activated. Thus, a person
might hold a positive attitude toward a social group and at
the same time automatically activate negative stereotypes
on the mere presence of a stereotyped group member.
Consequently, implicit measures (like response latencies) and
explicit measures (like scores on self-report scales) of ethnic
prejudice might be dissociated. Given this state of affairs, to
what extent are implicit attitudes reflected in explicit attitude
measures? This issue is addressed in the present paper.
Since the 1970s, social psychologists have questioned the
traditional paper-and-pencil questionnaires ability to accurately

reflect prejudicial attitudes that people may harbor against


minority groups (e.g., McConahay, Hardee & Batts, 1981).
This suspicion was motivated because of the reactivity biases
due to, for example, social desirability. Crosby, Bromley, and
Saxe (1980), for example, concluded that anti-Black sentiments are much more prevalent among White Americans
than the survey data lead one to expect (p. 546). Further, it
has been argued that the prevailing sociopolitical climate
(Katz & Hass, 1988) and peoples tendency to present themselves as non-prejudiced and socially or politically correct
may prevent the expression of racial/ethnic prejudice
openly (Crosby et al., 1980; see also Akrami, Ekehammar &
Araya, 2000; Franco & Maass, 1999; Pettigrew & Meertens,
1995). Consequently, two types of scales measuring racial/
ethnic prejudice have been suggested; one (old-fashioned)
tapping direct or open, and another (modern) tapping
covert or subtle racial/ethnic prejudice (e.g., McConahay
1986). One example is the old-fashioned and the modern
racism (the Modern Racism Scale) measures suggested by
McConahay (1986). More recently, however, some researchers
have suggested that, like traditional (i.e., old-fashioned)
self-report measures, the modern measures might be equally
reactive and susceptible to social desirability and selfpresentational concerns (cf. Brauer, Wasel & Niedenthal, 2000;
Dovidio et al., 1997; Fazio, Jackson, Dunton & Williams,
1995).
Important in the present context is the study of Fazio et al.
(1995) where a dissociation was found between a measure of
explicit prejudice (the Modern Racism Scale) and a measure
of implicit prejudice based on response latency. However,
Fazio and his colleagues found an interaction between the

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362

N. Akrami and B. Ekehammar

participants Modern Racism Scale scores and their motivation


to control prejudiced reactions. On this basis, they argued
that the resulting dissociation was due to the reactivity of
the Modern Racism Scale. Similarly, Dovidio et al. (1997),
employing a response-latency-based measure of implicit attitudes, found a significant relationship between this measure
and the Modern Racism Scale scores in one of their three
experiments. Like Fazio et al. (1995), Dovidio et al. (1997)
questioned the non-reactivity of the Modern Racism
Scale. Regardless of the method employed for measuring
implicit prejudice, researchers seem to agree that the lack
of association between implicit and explicit prejudice might
be due to the bias in the explicit measures (cf. Brauer et al.,
2000).

Assessing implicit ethnic attitudes


A widely used method for assessing implicit attitudes, besides
the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee
& Schwartz, 1998), is the adjective evaluation task (Fazio,
Sanbonmatsu, Powell & Kardes, 1986). Like the IAT, a typical feature of this response-latency-based technique is that
participants are first exposed to a prime (e.g., a facial photograph
of a European-American or an African-American) and then
a target word (e.g., either a positive or a negative adjective).
Participants are asked to indicate the valence (positive/
negative) of the presented target word. The response latency
is then measured. The associated evaluation of the prime in
the participants memory is assumed to facilitate or inhibit
participants response.
The adjective evaluation technique is a sensitive measure
of implicit attitudes and it has been shown to provide an
accurate test of the automaticity of evaluation (Fazio et al.,
1995). Therefore, in the present study, we employ this technique to measure implicit ethnic prejudice, and following
Fazio et al. (1995) and Ekehammar, Akrami and Araya
(2003), we use photographs to automatically activate ethnic
stereotypes.

Assessing explicit ethnic attitudes


As mentioned above, explicit attitudes are measured by
self-report instruments. One such instrument for measuring
racial /ethnic beliefs is McConahay et al.s (1981) Modern
Racism Scale, which is probably the most frequently used
instrument for assessing racial /ethnic beliefs, mainly toward
African-Americans. Since its introduction, though, the scale
has received much criticism, for example for its reactivity
(e.g., Fazio et al., 1995). However, there have been attempts
to develop valid measures of racial / ethnic beliefs, not only
toward a specific minority group (African-Americans), but
toward minority groups in general (e.g., immigrants). One
such scale is the Modern Racial Prejudice Scale (Akrami
et al., 2000), developed for a European context, which we
use in the present study.

Scand J Psychol 46 (2005)

Motivation to control prejudiced reactions


Due to the nature of prejudiced beliefs, scales that measure
these beliefs can be influenced by different factors, for example,
peoples motivation to control prejudiced reactions (e.g.,
Dunton & Fazio, 1997; Plant & Devine, 1998). Plant and
Devine (1998), for example, found that the expressed prejudiced beliefs varied with peoples motivation to control their
prejudice and whether these beliefs were expressed in private
or public. Further, Dunton and Fazio (1997) found that the
expression of racial/ethnic prejudice on self-report measures
was moderated by the extent to which participants were
motivated to inhibit their prejudiced responses. More specifically, Dunton and Fazio (1997; Fazio et al., 1995) found
that individuals with higher motivation to control their
prejudice scored lower on the explicit prejudice measure,
although their implicit attitude scores were high. However,
for the low-motivated group the implicit and explicit attitude
measures were congruent. Emphasizing the importance
of the impact of motivational factors on the measurement
of explicit prejudice, we suggest that these factors should be
further investigated.
Aim and hypotheses
The primary aim of the present research was to examine
whether implicit and explicit attitudes are associated or not.
To this end, we employ the adjective evaluation task as an
implicit attitude measure, and the Modern Racial Prejudice
Scale (Akrami et al., 2000) as an explicit attitude measure.
Moreover, we analyze the impact of motivation to control
ones prejudiced reactions on the explicit attitude measure.
We hypothesized that a negative correlation between motivation to control ones prejudice and scores on the Modern
Racial Prejudice Scale would indicate the reactivity of the
scale.
More important, we examined what happens if the scores
on Modern Racial Prejudice Scale are corrected for motivational biases. We argue that an association between explicit
and implicit ethnic attitude measures might be revealed if
the scores on the Modern Racial Prejudice Scale are corrected for the motivation to control ones prejudice. Specifically, we hypothesized that, if the scores on Modern Racial
Prejudice Scale are negatively correlated with motivation to
control ones prejudice, no association between explicit and
implicit racial/ethnic attitudes will be found. However, if the
explicit attitude scores are corrected for the motivation to
control prejudiced reactions, an association between explicit
and implicit racial/ethnic attitudes will be found.
METHODS
Participants
The participants were 42 Swedish students (two of which had
non-Swedish origin), 19 non-psychology university students and

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Implicit and explicit prejudice 363

Scand J Psychol 46 (2005)


23 students at the local authority-administered adult education, a
highly heterogeneous group with various backgrounds who can be
expected to vary on ethnic prejudice, among other things. There were
20 women and 22 men between 20 and 43 years (M = 26.8 years) of
age. The university students took part in the experiment for course
credit whereas the other participants received cinema vouchers
(equivalent to &7).

Stimulus materials
The primes consisted of 132 color photographs of faces (head shots,
6 5 cm) taken from the Internet. Sixty-six of these represented faces
(33 men and 33 women) that had foreign-looking features (i.e., dark
hair, dark eyes, and sometimes dark skin) and 66 had a paler and
blonder appearance and represented Swedish faces (33 men and 33
women). The immigrant photographs were chosen based on a previous study of which particular national categories people associate
with the word immigrant in Sweden (Akrami, Ekehammar & Araya,
2003). The photographs represented the most frequent national
categories obtained in that study (e.g., Asian, African, Middle East,
South American, and Mediterranean). All photographs were modified
to have a white background and identical size.

Apparatus
The experiment was conducted using an AST Premmia GX P/133
computer with a NEC MultiSync XP 21 monitor run with a resolution of 1024 768 and 75 Hz refresh rate. The computer monitor
was controlled by the Authorware 3.1 program.

Procedure
On arrival, participants were greeted by the experimenter and were
told that the main purpose of the experiments was to examine various memory and language phenomena. The experimental procedure
was adopted from Fazio et al. (1995) and consisted of six phases,
described below, where the fourth phase involved the actual priming
task.
The first phase was run to obtain baseline data and involved the
presentation of words on the computer monitor. Participants were
led to believe that this phase involved a language-testing task
where the speed for assigning word-valence was measured. The participant had to press a key labeled negative or positive as quickly as
possible to indicate her/ his response to the valence of the word. The
list of words comprised 24 adjectives; 12 negative (aggressive, troublesome, stupid, deceitful, lazy, impolite, passive, careless, disturbed, gloomy,
boring, disgusting) and 12 positive ( pleasant, decent, intelligent, loyal,
reliable, tidy, smart, kind, sound, nice, handsome, honest). Participants
were instructed to respond as fast and accurately as possible. Each
adjective was presented twice and remained on the center of the
screen until the participant responded. The presentation order of the
adjectives was randomized for each participant. A 2.5 s interval
separated each trial. Response latency for each trial (from adjective
onset to response) was recorded to the nearest millisecond.
The second phase (face-memory-testing) ostensibly involved the
ability to memorize faces for later recognition. The participants task
was simply to attend to the faces presented on the computer screen.
They were told that they would be given a recognition task involving
these faces subsequently. The stimuli were 16 immigrant and Swedish
facial photographs (four male and four female faces from each
group). Each photograph was presented twice, and remained on the
screen for 5 s. A 2.5 s interval separated each presentation. The
presentation order of the photographs was randomized for each
participant.

The third phase involved a recognition test of the previously presented faces. The photographs from the previous phase and 16 new
filler photographs were presented on the computer monitor. Participants were told to press the key labeled yes if the face had appeared,
and no if the face had not appeared in the previous phase. Each face
remained on the screen for 5 s and a 2.5-s interval separated each
trial. The participants responses were recorded.
The fourth phase involved the actual priming task. Participants were
led to believe that this phase involved a combination of a language
and a face-memory task. Twenty-four Swedish (12 men and
12 women) and 24 immigrant (12 men and 12 women) facial photographs (not used in the previous phases) served as primes. The 24
adjectives from the first phase were used as target adjectives. On any
given trial, a prime photograph was presented for 315 ms, followed
by a 135-ms interval before the onset of the target adjective. A 2.5-s
interval separated each trial. Four blocks of trials were presented.
Each block consisted of 48 trials in which the primes appeared once,
followed by one of the adjectives. Over the course of the four blocks,
each prime was paired, randomly, with two positive and two negative
adjectives. The instruction and procedures were identical, with one
exception, to those of the first phase. Participants were told that it
was important to attend to the presented faces because they would
be asked to recognize these faces later. The participants responses
regarding the valence of the adjective, and the response latencies
were recorded to the nearest millisecond.
The fifth phase involved a recognition test of the faces presented in
the previous phase. Those photographs and 48 new filler photographs were presented on the computer monitor. Participants were
told to press the key labeled yes if the face had appeared, and no if
the face had not appeared in the previous phase. Each photograph
remained on the screen for 5 s. A 2.5-s interval separated each trial.
The sixth and final phase involved attractiveness ratings of the
facial photographs presented in the fourth phase. Participants were
told that we were interested in assessing the extent to which the
attractiveness of a face had an effect on their performance on previous
tasks (in the fourth phase). They were instructed to press one of the ten
keys labeled 1 (not attractive) to 10 (very attractive) to indicate their
rating of the attractiveness of each face. Each photograph remained
on the screen until the participant had made her or his response.
After completing this task, participants were, seemingly, thanked
and dismissed. Before leaving the experiment room, however, participants were asked if they had a few minutes time to spare to help a
research colleague from another university. They were told that a
colleague was doing research in social psychology and was currently
collecting material for his research. The experimenter informed them
that we had promised to help him in collecting some of the data in
our laboratory. Participants were then guided to another room and
asked to complete a booklet containing the Modern Racial Prejudice
Scale, and a Swedish version of the Motivation to Control Prejudiced
Reactions Scale.
The Modern Racial Prejudice Scale was constructed by Akrami
et al. (2000) for measuring modern (covert, subtle, symbolic) racial /
ethnic prejudice in a Scandinavian context following the item contents of McConahays (1986) Modern Racism Scale. Reliability and
validity data for the scale are provided by Akrami et al. (2000). The
scale contains 9 items (example: Discrimination against immigrants is
no longer a problem in Sweden). The scale had an internal consistency
reliability (Cronbachs alpha) of 0.78 in the present sample. The
Motivation to Control Prejudiced Reactions Scale was adapted to a
Swedish context from Dunton and Fazio (1997) and consisted of
7 items. The scale had a reliability of 0.70 in the present sample and
includes such items as In todays society its important that one not be
perceived as prejudiced in any manner and If I have a prejudice thought
or feeling, I keep it to myself. The answers on the two scales were
indicated on a 5-step scale ranging from Do not agree at all (1) to
Agree fully (5). In order not to arouse participants suspicion about

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364

N. Akrami and B. Ekehammar

the main purpose of the study the scale items were embedded in
items concerning general subjects (e.g., The social insurance system
should be further developed.).
Participants were given a pre-paid envelope addressed to our alleged
colleague at another university. The experimenter informed participants to put it in a mailbox after completion and left the room.
However, on their way to the mailbox the experimenter informed the
participants that they could hand him the envelope and he could
himself put it in the mailbox.
None of the participants reported any suspicion about any part of
the experiment, or noted any relation between the experiment and
the booklet containing the Modern Racial Prejudice Scale and the
Motivation to Control Prejudiced Reactions Scale. Participants were
debriefed, thanked, and dismissed.

Calculation of response latencies


For each participant, baseline latency for each adjective was calculated from the average of the two presentations of the adjective in the
first phase. The response latencies for each target adjective (presented
after the prime) were subtracted from the baseline. For every prime
(face photograph), there were two negative and two positive target
adjectives. We calculated the average response latency for the positive
and the negative adjectives. Further, for each participant, average
positive and negative response latencies for Swedish and immigrant
primes were then calculated.
If a prime has a negative implicit association, its presentation
should inhibit (slow) responses to positive adjectives and facilitate
(speed up) the responses to the negative adjectives (Fazio et al., 1986,
1995). Thus, a high response latency (slower response) on negative
adjectives would indicate a positive attitude. That is, the participant
has a weak association between the specific prime and the negative
adjective. A high response latency (slower response) on positive
adjectives, on the other hand, indicates a negative attitude. That is,
the participant has a weak association between the specific prime
and the positive adjective.
To simplify the analyses, the positive and negative response latencies were combined to a single negativity index for each prime group
(immigrant and Swedish). The index was calculated by (a) reversing
the negative response latencies, and (b) taking the sum of negative
and positive response latencies for every participant. Finally, we
created a single measure of implicit negativity by subtracting the
negative implicit attitude scores to Swedish primes from the negative
implicit attitudes scores to immigrant primes. We will refer to this
measure as Implicit Ethnic Prejudice, where higher scores indicate
higher negativity toward immigrants.
Response errors that involved responding positive when a negative target word was presented, and negative when a positive target
word was presented, were disregarded. There were 33 response errors
to the negative and 21 to the positive adjective targets.
To reduce the skewness associated with response latency data, the
response latencies are usually subjected to a logarithmic transformation (e.g., Blair & Banaji, 1996). In the present study, there were no
differences between the results for logarithmically transformed and
non-transformed data. Therefore, and for simplicity, we chose to
present the non-transformed results.

Correction of explicit measures


To investigate the possibility that the scores on the Modern Racial
Prejudice Scale may be influenced by the motivation to control ones
prejudice, the Modern Racial Prejudice Scale scores were regressed
on the Motivation to Control Prejudiced Reactions Scale scores (see
Forsman, 1993; Jackson, 1967). The residuals for the Modern Racial
Prejudice Scale scores were calculated for each participant.

Scand J Psychol 46 (2005)

RESULTS
Control analyses
Outliers. Multivariate outliers, defined as those having standardized residuals above z = 2.5 or below z = 2.5, were
identified (n = 2) and excluded from further analyses.
Detection data. During the second and the fourth phase,
participants were instructed to attend to the presented
photographs for later recognition. Thus, the recognition data
served as a measure of the participants attention, thereby
testing whether participants had followed the instruction.
The mean proportion of correctly recognized photographs
was 0.98 in the third phase, and 0.87 in the fifth phase. This
was statistically higher than chance level (0.50), t(39) =
130.52, p < 0.001, and t(39) = 34.24, p < 0.001, respectively.
Attractiveness ratings. To examine whether attractiveness of
the presented faces had an impact on the response latencies,
participants were instructed to rate the faces on the photographs as to their attractiveness. Mean attractiveness for
immigrant (M = 4.80, SD = 1.14) and Swedish (M = 4.56,
SD = 1.17) facial photographs were computed. No significant difference was found, t(39) = 1.76, p = 0.09.

Main analyses
Correlation analysis. A product-moment correlation was
computed between the Modern Racial Prejudice scores and
the scores on the Motivation to Control Prejudiced Reactions Scale. The analysis revealed a significant correlation
between the scales (r = 0.51, p = 0.001).
Implicit ethnic prejudice. The Implicit Ethnic Prejudice scores
(M = 0.05, SD = 0.11) were analyzed by conducting a onesample t-test. The analysis revealed that the mean was significantly different from zero, t(39) = 2.99, p < 0.005, which
shows that the participants displayed more negative implicit
attitudes when exposed to immigrant as compared to Swedish
faces.
Implicit and explicit ethnic prejudice. To make possible comparisons with previous research (e.g., Devine, 1989; Lepore
& Brown, 1997; Kawakami, Dion & Dovidio, 1998), we first
examined whether participants with high and low explicit
racial/ ethnic attitudes (also) differ in their implicit ethnic
attitudes. Based on the Modern Racial Prejudice scores (the
explicit attitude measure) participants were classified by
a median split as high and low on explicit prejudice. A onetailed t-test revealed no significant difference in Implicit
Ethnic Prejudice between the groups (M = 0.06, SD = 0.11, n =
19 for high, and M = 0.05, SD = 0.11, n = 21 for low), t(38)
= 0.27, p = 0.40. Thus, participants high and low in explicit

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Implicit and explicit prejudice 365

Scand J Psychol 46 (2005)

Fig. 1. Mean implicit prejudice for people with high and low scores
on uncorrected and corrected (for motivational bias) explicit prejudice.

ethnic prejudice showed implicit ethnic prejudice to the same


extent. However, an analysis based on the corrected Modern
Racial Prejudice scores revealed that the high-prejudice
group (M = 0.09, SD = 0.09, n = 20) showed significantly
more implicit ethnic prejudice than the low-prejudice group
(M = 0.01, SD = 0.11, n = 20), t(38) = 2.62, p = 0.01 (see
Fig. 1).
In addition, and using a more appropriate method, productmoment correlation analysis was conducted between the
continuous implicit and explicit prejudice scores. The analyses
revealed no significant relationship between the implicit and
the uncorrected explicit scores (r = 0.20, p = 0.22) whereas
the relationship was significant when using the corrected
explicit scores (r = 0.38, p = 0.02). Thus, this pattern corresponds to the analyses above using a median split on the
explicit scores.

DISCUSSION
With few exceptions (e.g., Dunton & Fazio, 1997; Fazio et al.,
1995; Plant & Devine, 1998), previous research has not
emphasized the importance of examining the role of peoples
motivation to control prejudiced reactions when measuring
ethnic attitudes. Responding to this state of affairs, and
following Fazio et al. (1995; Dunton & Fazio, 1997), we
investigated the role of motivation and its impact on the
association between implicit and explicit ethnic attitude
measures.
The results of our study revealed evidence for participants
implicit ethnic prejudice. Specifically, following immigrant
primes, response latencies were slow to positive adjectives and
fast to negative adjectives, as compared to Swedish primes.
In addition, the correlation analysis showed a strong negative
relationship between modern ethnic prejudice (our explicit
measure) and motivation to control prejudiced reactions, which
demonstrates the reactivity of the Modern Racial Prejudice
Scale and its sensitivity to motivational factors.
More important, the analyses revealed no significant correlation between implicit and explicit ethnic prejudice, thus,
no association between explicit and implicit prejudice was
found. However, when the modern ethnic prejudice scores

were corrected for motivational biases, a significant correlation (i.e., association) was obtained. The same pattern of
results was obtained when analyzing people high and low
(median-split) on explicit prejudice. Thus, the results confirm our hypothesis that motivation to control prejudiced
reactions has a moderating role in the association between
explicit and implicit prejudice. However, it should be noted
that the association between explicit and implicit prejudice
even after the correction was not especially strong. In accord
with Fazio et al. (1995) and Dunton and Fazio (1997), we
can conclude that peoples motivation to control or conceal
prejudiced reactions seems to be an important factor to take
into account when studying the relationship or association
between implicit and explicit prejudice. Finally, it must be
added that other factors can also be of importance for the
implicit-explicit prejudice relationship, for example, whether
the outgroup is normatively protected against discrimination
or not (Franco & Maass, 1999).
Devine (1989), in her dissociation model, argued that a
person might hold a positive attitude toward a social group
and at the same time automatically activate negative stereotypes on the mere presence of a stereotyped group member.
On this basis, Devine predicted that implicit and explicit
measures of ethnic prejudice might be dissociated and she
obtained empirical verification of this prediction as well.
Several studies, however, have shown that Devines assumption might not be valid and various explanations have
been offered (e.g., Kawakami et al., 1998; Lepore & Brown,
1997; Locke, MacLeod & Walker, 1994; Moskowitz, Wasel,
Gollwitzer & Schaal, 1999; Wittenbrink, Judd & Park, 1997).
Although the present study seems to speak against Devines
(1989) dissociation model as well, we argue that it provides
convergent evidence for automatic stereotype activation
and confirms the assumption that stereotypes are activated
automatically on the mere presence of a stereotyped group
member.
In conclusion, the present research has demonstrated the
utility of the adjective evaluation technique as a method for
measuring implicit prejudice and the sensitivity of self-report
instruments to motivational biases when measuring explicit
prejudice. Our findings lend additional support to the evidence
presented by Fazio et al. (1995; Dunton & Fazio, 1997) for
the impact of motivation on the implicit-explicit prejudice
relation in a different social context, a European country, and
in relation to a different target group, immigrants in general.
However, to arrive at a firm conclusion and test the external
validity of the findings, the present study should be replicated using non-student samples of participants. Finally, in
future research the importance of also exploring other variables that may moderate the relationship between implicit
and explicit prejudice must be emphasized.
This research was supported by Grant F0890/97 to Bo Ekehammar
from the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and
Social Sciences. The authors would like to thank Tadesse Araya for
his insightful comments on an earlier version of this article.

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Received 30 May 2003, accepted 25 May 2004

2005 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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