RURAL ENVIRONMENT. EDUCATION. PERSONALITY. Vol.14. ISSN 2661-5207 Jelgava, 7-8 May 2021 216 DOI: 10.22616/REEP.2021.14.024 Measuring the Affective and Cognitive Bases of Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Towards Domestic and Foreign Food Brands Biruta Urbane 1 Mg. psych.; Irina Plotka 2 Dr. psych. Nina Blumenau 3 Dr. sc. ing.; Dmitry Igonin 4 Dr. psych. Baltic International Academy, Latvia b_urban@inbox.lv 1 ; irinaplotka@inbox.lv 2 , nina.blum@gmail.com 3 , latenta@balticom.lv 4 Abstract: The problem of accounting automatic affective and cognitive processes as bases for implicit attitudes towards brands, as well as methods for measuring them, is poorly developed. An analysis of previous research shows that the study of attitudes towards brands in terms of their affective and cognitive components is mainly carried out using self-assessment procedures. The aim of this research is to measure the affective and cognitive bases of implicit and explicit attitudes towards brands of domestic and foreign foods. Participants N = 131, aged 17-57 (Mdn = 31). Measures: specifically designed methodically balanced procedures for measuring implicit and explicit attitudes towards food brands: affective and cognitive implicit associative tests (IAT), Self-Concept IAT; emotional and cognitive explicit procedures and demographic questionnaires. The consistency of the results of implicit and explicit measurements is shown. The results of the measurements of implicit attitudes using three IAT procedures are related too. Using factor analysis, the independence of the constructs of explicit and implicit attitudes towards brands was confirmed, which is interpreted in terms of the theory of double attitudes. The greatest contribution to the implicit attitude, measured by the Self-concept IAT, is made by the cognitive component of attitude, which represents the implicit brand associations of domestic or foreign foods with attributes that characterize the price and quality of the foods. All implicit assessments obtained separately using the affective and cognitive procedures of the IAT, as well as the Self-concept IAT, testified in favour of the preference for foods of domestic brands. However, explicit assessments of the frequency of consumption of the brands under consideration did not reveal preferences for any of them. This discrepancy is seen not only as evidence of a possible ambivalent interaction between affective and cognitive associations, but also as an indication of the importance of future measurements of implicit assessments of instrumental associations that are the result of instrumental learning from consumers. This has the potential to improve the predictive validity of implicit measurements of brand attitudes and to better understand the structure of implicit consumer attitudes and the mechanisms of their influence on behaviour. Keywords: implicit and explicit attitudes towards brand, implicit associative test, attitude’s affective and cognitive base, overall attitude, consumer psychology. Introduction The importance of studying consumer attitudes (attitudes towards brands or brand attitudes) lies in the fact that they influence consumer behaviour. Consumer behaviour is highly dependent on both automatic, unconscious cognitive processes and controlled, conscious ones (Perkins, Forehand, 2010; Dimofte, 2010). Accounting of the automatic affective and semantic (cognitive) processes underlying consumer attitudes will contribute to a deeper understanding of how the general representation of attitudes is formed. There is the problem of measuring the affective and cognitive aspects of the explicit and implicit of brand attitudes using direct and indirect measurements. The modern conceptualization of the attitude is that it represents an overall assessment of an object based on cognitive, affective and behavioural information (Eagly, Chaiken, 1993; Maio, Haddock, Verplanken, 2018). This definition presupposes three substantive components of the attitude, which make up a generalized assessment of the attitude and indicate its general structure. Implicit and Explicit Attitudes In the literature devoted to the issue of studying attitudes, there is a lot of controversy regarding the understanding of the concept of attitudes and the theoretical models that explain their nature. Basically, theoretical models present implicit and explicit attitudes as two qualitatively different ways of cognitive