Including Others in the Implicit Self: Implicit Evaluation of Significant Others

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.