Implicit prototypes predict risky sun behavior.

OBJECTIVE Despite the fact that skin cancer is highly avoidable, incidence and death rates in the United States continue to climb. The pattern is particularly problematic among young, White women, who sometimes overexpose themselves to harmful ultraviolet rays in hopes of being tan. Research has suggested that positivity toward prototypes of individuals who engage in unhealthy behavior, like tanning, influences the likelihood that an individual will personally engage in those behaviors. Although the prototype-to-behavior link is considered to operate automatically, researchers have typically relied on people's self-reported evaluations of prototypes, which are more controlled and susceptible to self-presentational concerns. METHOD In the present research, we developed a measure of implicit prototypes and compared it with measures of explicit prototypes in predicting the safe sun behavior of 731 women. RESULTS Meta-analysis of 5 different prototypes (i.e., cool, fun, healthy, intelligent, and attractive) suggested that implicit prototypes predicted more variance in women's current behavior, planned behavior, behavioral willingness, and tanning frequency than did explicit prototypes. CONCLUSION Although some models recognize that health behavior may be based on automatic processes, they exclusively use measures of self-reported attitudes and prototypes to predict behavior. The results suggest that measuring implicit prototypes may provide important explanatory power.