This Research Career Award will facilitate the PI's (a) work on development of theory and research method for the investigation implicit and unconscious cognition (b) active collaboration with colleagues at other institutions, and (c) training of future scientists. The PI has had continuous research support since 1966 from National Science Foundation and/or national Institute of Mental health, and is presently PI on two projects (one supported by NIMH since 1988; the other by NSF since 1992) that have produced important new results in the past few years. One project has been using responses to visual """"""""subliminal"""""""" stimuli in order to elucidate the capabilities and limits of unconscious cognition triggered by current stimuli. Recent findings in this project provided methods for replicably producing and detecting influences of stimuli that remain undetected by subjects. This method not only permits investigations of the potential for unwanted subliminal influence in mass media, but has provided a valuable tool that will be used to evaluate theories of unconscious cognitive capabilities that participate in language and perceptual processing. The second project investigates individual differences in attitudes, stereotypes, and self-esteem that operate outside of conscious awareness (implicitly). Recent findings in this project have provided a new method (the Implicit Association Test) that has greatly facilitated laboratory research on these implicit processes, and also provides a measurement procedure that has multiple potential applications because of the indications that it successfully circumvents the self-presentation or impression-management processes that heavily influence responses to most traditional measures of attitudes, stereotypes, and self-esteem. The PI has a past record of training students who currently hold tenured academic positions in which they are pursuing their own research programs. This award will release the PI from responsibilities that compete with the opportunity to mentor Ph.D. trainees.
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