The development of an implicit measure of treatment expectations.

Abstract

In three preregistered studies, we investigated whether implicit treatment expectations, using a relational implicit measure (the MT-PEP), vary between participants provided opposing information about novel medical treatments (Studies 1 and 2) or who responded based on normative beliefs toward common over-the-counter drugs (Study 3). The studies revealed large Cohen's d effect sizes of both novel and well-known treatment information within the implicit measure. The studies also provide evidence of convergent validity, with MT-PEP scores associated with explicit beliefs about medicine and over-the-counter drug familiarity. Implicit treatment expectations can be assessed and offer a novel tool for the intersection of social psychology and medicine.