Self-report measures arguably represent one of the most important research tools in social and personality psychology. To measure people’s attitudes, beliefs, and personality characteristics, it seems rather straightforward to simply ask them about their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Yet, researchers are well aware that people are sometimes unwilling or unable to provide accurate reports of their own psychological attributes. In socially sensitive domains, for example, responses on self-report measures are often distorted by social desirability and self-presentational concerns. Similarly, the value of self-report measures seems limited for psychological attributes that are introspectively inaccessible or outside of conscious awareness. To overcome these limitations, psychologists have developed alternative measurement instruments that reduce participants’ ability to control their responses and do not require introspection for the assessment of psychological attributes. In social and personality psychology, such measurement instruments are commonly referred to as implicit measures, whereas traditional self-report measures are often described as explicit measures.

The main goal of the current chapter is to provide a general introduction to the use and meaning of implicit measures in social and personality psychology. Toward this end, we first explain what implicit measures are and in which sense they may be described as implicit. We then provide an overview of the currently available paradigms, including descriptions of their basic procedures and some recommendations on how to choose among the various measures. Expanding on this overview, we outline the kinds of insights that can be gained from implicit measures for understanding the determinants of behavior, biases in infor-