Activation of exemplars in the process of assessing social category attitudes

Three experiments used process measures of concept activation to provide ev idence-consistent with previous research, which had used only outcome and s elf-report measures-that people use category exemplars to assess their soci al category attitudes. The studies were based on the well-established princ iple that individuals selectively activate different aspects of their knowl edge about a topic, depending on which aspect is relevant for a specific ju dgment. Exemplar activation was measured through ambiguous anagrams (Experi ment 1), word fragment completions (Experiment 2), and response latencies ( Experiment 3). In each case, exemplar activation was greater when participa nts had recently judged their attitudes toward a social category than when they had recently judged a definition of the category. implications for the ories of attitude change and attitude-behavior consistency are discussed.