AUTHOR=Zhang Wanyu , Zou Jilin , Yue Tong 

TITLE=The implicit and explicit attitudes of Chinese university students towards genetic modification

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 13 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1014395

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1014395

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Public attitudes toward genetic modification (GM) technology have an important impact on the technology’s development. Previous Chinese surveys used to assess public attitudes toward GM have mostly focused on the explicit level. However, research on the implicit level is lacking, so public attitudes toward the complete concept of GM are still unclear. In order to fill this gap, this study uses a questionnaire survey (Study 1), and interaction verification of the SC-IAT paradigm and the GNAT paradigm (Study 2) to investigate the explicit and implicit attitudes of Chinese university students towards GM. The role of education level is also examined in this study. The results show that the explicit attitudes of Chinese college students towards GM are generally positive, and the main effect of education level is significant. Finally, the mediating effect of the cognitive level between education level and explicit GM attitude is significant. However, the implicit GM attitudes of university students are generally negative, and neither the main effect of education level nor the mediating effect of cognition level is significant. This study provides a theoretical basis for improving Chinese university students' attitudes toward GM and also provides new research ideas for the public view of GM.