Looking Back on Identities Past: Implicit and Explicit Evaluations of Former Groups

Group memberships have consequences for social evaluation, leading people to prefer in-groups over out-groups. However, group membership can change. In this paper, I investigate implicit and explicit evaluations of a past in-group. Across three studies, former Christians showed less positive implicit and explicit evaluations of Christianity than current Christians, but also slightly more positive implicit evaluations compared to non-religious individuals who were never Christian. This lingering influence of group membership on implicit evaluation was not moderated by the length of time since group exit or past level of involvement in Christianity. Overall, implicit and explicit evaluations of former Christians more closely resembled those of their current group rather than those of their past identity.