Assessing the Independence of Explicitly- and Implicitly- Assessed Relationship Evaluations

In light of dual-process models of social cognition, relationship scientists have utilized measures designed to bypass deliberative processing in order to capture spouses' more automatic attitudes about their partners and their relationships. Here, we review the theoretical distinctions between deliberative and automatic evaluations as laid out by dual process models of social cognition, discuss the implications of these distinctions in the context of romantic relationships, and present a meta-analysis of correlations between explicitly and implicitly-measured relationship evaluations. A fixed-effects meta-analysis of 65 correlations summarizing the relationship evaluations of 2688 total participants revealed that the overall association between the two types of measures was significant but small (r = .05), indicating that explicit and implicit evaluations capture distinct relationship phenomena. We end by discussing several theoretical implications, including when implicit versus explicit measures of relationships may be more appropriate, the contexts in which implicit and explicit relationship evaluations might be more or less correlated, and why studying romantic relationships can offer unique insights for dual process models of social cognition.