3 Attitudinal Dissociation

A by-product of increasing recent attention to implicit measures of attitudes is the controversial hypothesis of dissociated attitude representations (i.e., dual attitudes). This reference to dissociation implies the existence of distinct structural representations underlying distinguishable classes of attitude manifestations. In psychology, appeals to dissociation range from the mundane to the exotic. At the mundane end, the dissociation label may be attached to the simple absence or weakness of correlation between presumably related measures. At the exotic end, dissociation may be understood as a split in consciousness, such as mutually unaware person systems occupying the same brain. While recognizing this breadth of uses, we focus in this chapter on the specific usage in which dissociation refers to structurally separate and presumably independently functioning mental representations within the same brain. We shall keep this focus in sight by frequently referring to structural dissociation.