2010/05/05 by Tracy DeHart, Brett W. Pelham, Luke Fiedorowicz +2 · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Cultural Differences and Values #Attachment and Relationship Dynamics #Psychology #Implicit attitude #Implicit personality theory #Social psychology #Implicit-association test #Romance #Self #Developmental psychology #Personality
paper · doi:10.1080/15298861003687880
openalex publication_date 2010/05/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
We argue that people include significant others in their implicit self-concepts. That is, people's implicit evaluations of their significant others are related to their own self-evaluations. Data from five different samples supported this idea by demonstrating that people's implicit self-esteem is related to their implicit evaluations of their close others (both implicit self-esteem and implicit evaluations of significant others were assessed using the name-letter measure). This finding held for parent–child, romantic, and sibling relationships as well as for friendships. This finding also held controlling for people's explicit self-esteem and how much people liked letters in general. These findings suggest that people include significant others in their implicit self-concepts, which appear to be distinct representations from people's explicit beliefs. The potential implications for relationship functioning are discussed.