Thinking about anxiety moderates the relationship between implicit and explicit anxiety measures

Explicit measures (e.g., questionnaires) assess introspectively accessible self-descriptions and evaluations. In contrast, implicit measures (e.g., the Implicit Association Test) assess the self-concept indirectly, usually by means of performance measures such as reaction-time tasks. Correlations between implicit and explicit measures of personality dispositions tend to be low. The current study (N = 82) tested the hypothesis that thinking about anxiety-arousing (vs. extraversion-arousing) situations moderates the relationship between implicit and explicit anxiety measures. Results supported this prediction: While no association between implicit and explicit anxiety measures was found after writing about extraversion-related situations, writing about anxiety-related situations resulted in a significant implicit–explicit correlation. Altogether the present findings indicate that elaboration enhances the implicit–explicit relationship.