Olivier Corneille

Catholic University of Louvain | UCLouvain · Psychological Sciences Research Institute

Claims about unawareness are abundant in attitude research. The current article provides an analysis of evidence regarding three aspects of an attitude for which people may lack awareness: (1) the attitude itself, (2) its environmental causes, and (3) its behavioral effects. Our analysis reveals that, despite widespread claims of unawareness of the...

This chapter seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of past and present definitions, measures, and dimensions of interoception to facilitate understanding of the following chapters of this book. We first review past and contemporary definitions of interoception and discuss their respective strengths and limitations. Then, we differentiate the co...

Self-report measures directly ask respondents to report their mental content such as thoughts and feelings. By contrast, implicit measures aim to assess thoughts and feelings via performance indicators (for example, response times, error rates and response frequencies) under conditions that favor automatic processing. Implicit measures are now wide...

People judge repeated information as truer than new information. In politics, this truth effect may be used to manipulate beliefs and evaluations of other politicians (e.g., by repeatedly derogating an opponent). We investigate the truth effect for such statements about others in political contexts. In two pre-registered experiments, we examined ho...

The contribution of uncontrolled processes to evaluative learning has been examined in evaluative conditioning procedures by comparing evaluations of conditioned stimuli between tasks or within tasks but between learning instruction conditions. In the present research, we introduced a new procedure that keeps both tasks and instructions constant. I...

The contribution of uncontrolled processes to evaluative learning has been examined in evaluative conditioning procedures by comparing evaluations of conditioned stimuli between tasks or within tasks but between learning instruction conditions. In the present research, we introduced a new procedure that keeps both tasks and instructions constant. I...

People judge repeated statements as more truthful than new statements: a truth effect. In three pre-registered experiments (N = 463), we examined whether people expect repetition to influence truth judgments more for others than for themselves: a bias blind spot in the truth effect. In Experiments 1 and 2, using moderately plausible and implausible...

In two high‐powered experiments, we investigated how prior exposure to statements presented in a clickbait format increases the perceived truth of their content. In Experiment 1 ( N = 241), we hypothesized and found that prior exposure increased the proportion of “true” judgments for both non‐clickbait and clickbait content, but with a reduced effe...

Conscious interoception, the perception of internal bodily states, is thought to contribute to fundamental human abilities (e.g., decision-making and emotional regulation). One of its most studied dimensions is interoceptive accuracy: the objective capacity to detect internal bodily signals. In the past few years, several labs across the world have...

Authors rely on a range of devices and techniques to attract and maintain the interest of readers, and to convince them of the merits of the author’s point of view. However, when writing a scientific article, authors must use these ‘persuasive communication devices’ carefully. In particular, they must be explicit about the limitations of their work...

Interoception has been the subject of renewed interest over the past two decades. The involvement of interoception in a diverse range of fundamental human abilities (e.g., decision-making and emotional regulation) has led to the hypothesis that interoception is a central transdiagnostic process causing and maintaining mental disorders as well as ph...

A variety of psychological effects have been recently replicated in studies where participants merely received information describing experimental tasks, while participants experienced these tasks in studies where these effects were originally established. We argue that these successful instruction-based replication studies raise challenging questi...

Authors rely on a range of devices and techniques to attract and maintain the interest of readers, and to convince them of the merits of the author’s point of view. However, when writing a scientific article, authors must use these ‘persuasive communication devices’ carefully. In particular, they must be explicit about the limitations of their work...

We argue that successful instruction-based replication studies raise challenging questions for contemporary psychological research: (1) What does psychological science tell us about effects beyond common knowledge? (2) Does performing the experienced version of the task add to the effect, how much so, and why? (3) Should the effect be considere...

People judge repeated statements as more true than new statements: a truth effect. In three preregistered experiments (N = 463), we examined whether people predict others' truth judgments to be more biased by repetition than their own: a bias blind spot for the truth effect. In Experiment 1, using uncertain but moderately plausible statements, part...

People judge repeated information as truer than new information, a “truth-by-repetition” effect. Because repetition increases processing fluency, which is assumed to elicit positive affect, participants may match their positive experience associated with repeated information with a positive (“true”) rather than negative (“false”) response. We teste...

As researchers, we use academic writing to present our results to other academics and to a wider audience. In doing so, we may be tempted to use persuasive communication devices for promoting our research. These devices may be at risk of misleading readers and reviewers when assessing our research. In this document, we identify a list of such commu...

Attitude research has capitalized on evaluative conditioning procedures to gain insight into how evaluations are formed and may be changed. In evaluative conditioning, a conditioned stimulus (CS; e.g., an unfamiliar soda brand) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US) of affective value (e.g., a pleasant picture). Following this pairing, a cha...

Conscious interoception, the perception of internal bodily states, is thought to contribute to fundamental human abilities (e.g., decision-making and emotional regulation). One of its most studied dimensions is interoceptive accuracy: the objective capacity to detect internal bodily signals. In the past few years, several labs across the world have...

People occasionally encounter information whose structure bears divergent evaluative implications. For instance, when reading that a sunscreen protects against skin cancer, the relational meaning of the information (i.e., “protects against skin cancer”) has positive evaluative implications for the sunscreen, whereas the co-occurrence (of “sunscreen...

Past research indicates that people judge repeated statements as more true than new ones. An experiential consequence of repetition that may underly this “truth effect” is processing fluency: processing statements feels easier following their repetition. In three preregistered experiments (N=684), we examined the effect of merely instructed repetit...

Corneille et al. (2020) found that repetition increases judgments that statements have been used as fake news on social media. They also found that repetition increases truth judgments and decreases falsehood judgments (i.e., two instantiations of the truth-by repetition effect). These results supported an ecological explanation of the truth-by rep...

Study participants form beliefs based on cues present in a testing situation (demand characteristics). These beliefs can alter study outcomes (demand effects). Neglecting demand effects can threaten the internal and external validity of studies (including their replication). While demand characteristics garnered much attention following Orne’s intr...

In their target article, Gawronski et al. (this issue) propose to define implicit bias as the unconscious effect of social category cues on behavioral responses. Based on this definition, they reason that the study of biases on implicit measures may have little relevance to implicit biases arising in everyday life. We applaud Gawronski et al.’s com...

Study participants form beliefs based on cues present in a testing situation (demand characteristics). These beliefs can alter study outcomes (demand effects). Neglecting demand effects can threaten the internal and external validity of studies (including their replication). While demand characteristics garnered much attention following Orne's intr...

Moran et al. (2021) report a multi-lab registered replication of Olson and Fazio’s (2001) surveillance task. The surveillance task is an incidental learning procedure over the course of which participants observe pairings of conditioned stimuli (CSs) and unconditioned stimuli (USs) while engaging in a distracting secondary task. Unaware evaluative...

Interoception has been the object of renewed interest over the past two decades. The involvement of interoception in a diverse range of fundamental human abilities (e.g., decision-making and emotional regulation) has led to the hypothesis that interoception is a central transdiagnostic process causing and maintaining mental disorders as well as phy...

The Heartbeat Counting Task (HCT) was designed and is intended to measure the objective ability to detect cardiac signals (also called cardiac interoceptive accuracy). Because interoceptive accuracy is thought to play a key role in biological (e.g., body mass index) and psychological (e.g., trait anxiety) risk factors and indicators of mental healt...

Recent conceptualizations of interoception suggest several facets to this construct, including "interoceptive sensibility” and “self-report interoceptive scales", both of which are assessed with questionnaires. Although these conceptual efforts have helped move the field forward, uncertainty remains regarding whether current measures converge on th...

A single exposure to statements is typically enough to increase their perceived truth. This Truth-by-Repetition (TBR) effect has long been assumed to occur only with statements whose truth value is unknown to participants. Contrary to this hypothesis, recent research has found that statements contradicting participants' prior knowledge (as establis...

Attitude and social cognition research often tests dissociations in performance on "explicit" and "implicit" measures using tasks that widely differ from each other. This prevents a clear interpretation of the findings. A structural fit approach, involving tasks that differ only on the factor of theoretical interest, should be preferred. Here, we r...

Corneille et al. (2020) found that repetition increases judgments that statements have been used as fake news on social media, a result that is consistent with an ecological theorization. They also found that repetition increases truth judgments and decreases falsehood judgments (i.e., two instantiations of the Truth-by-Repetition effect), which is...

Past research indicates that people judge repeated statements as more true than new ones. An experiential consequence of repetition that may underly this “truth effect” is processing fluency: processing statements feels easier following their repetition. Here, we examine the effect of merely instructed (i.e., not experienced) repetition on truth ju...

A single exposure to statements is typically enough to increase their perceived truth. This Truth-by-Repetition (TBR) effect has long been assumed to occur only with statements whose truth value is unknown to participants. Contrary to this hypothesis, recent research found a TBR effect with statements known to be false. Of note, a recent model even...

Unlike objects, study participants form beliefs from cues present in a testing situation (demand characteristics). These beliefs can alter study outcomes (demand effects). Neglecting demand effects can threaten the internal and external validity of studies (including their replication). While demand characteristics garnered much attention following...

Using an online experiment, we investigate intertemporal preferences to infer people’s willingness to accept negative interest rates (NIRs) on their savings. We find some tolerance of NIRs, i.e., of people being willing to hold money in the bank rather than spend it, thereby accepting less savings at some future time. This tolerance strongly depend...

People occasionally face sure loss prospects. Do they seek risk in search of better outcomes or contend with the sure loss and focus on what is left to be saved? We addressed this question in three experiments akin to a negative interest rate framework. Specifically, we asked participants to allocate money (Experiments 1 and 2) or choose (Experimen...

Recent conceptualizations of interoception suggest several facets to this construct, including "interoceptive sensibility” and “self-report interoceptive scales", both of which are assessed with questionnaires. Although these conceptual efforts have helped move the field forward, uncertainty remains regarding whether current measures converge on th...

Evaluative conditioning is one of the most widely studied procedures for establishing and changing attitudes. The surveillance task is a highly cited evaluative-conditioning paradigm and one that is claimed to generate attitudes without awareness. The potential for evaluative-conditioning effects to occur without awareness continues to fuel concept...

Moran et al. (2020) recently conducted a multi-lab registered replication of Olson and Fazio’s (2001) surveillance task study—an incidental learning procedure designed to establish evaluative conditioning (EC) effects in the absence of awareness. The potential for unaware attitude formation continues to fuel conceptual, theoretical, and applied dev...

Research on Evaluative Conditioning (EC) that relied on a Process Dissociation (PD) procedure supports the possibility of attitude learning effects acquired or maintained in the absence of explicit memory. In the present research we argue that basic assumptions inherent to the PD procedure are both theoretically and empirically unjustified. We intr...

Interoceptive accuracy is thought to play a key role in mental health. However, the validity of its most frequently used measure (i.e., the Heartbeat Counting Task; HCT) has been questioned. This calls for a meta-analytic examination of associations between HCT performance and mental health. To this end, we performed a systematic review and meta-an...

Heartbeat Counting Task (HCT) scores are thought to indicate people’s objective ability to detect their cardiac signals (i.e., their cardiac interoceptive accuracy). In a re-analysis of a large sample of HCT scores, we found that these scores show a .80 correlation with the total number of reported heartbeats when using the original instructions al...

People believe repeated statements more compared to new statements – they show a truth by repetition effect. In three pre-registered experiments, we show that repetition may also increase perceptions that statements are used as fake news on social media, irrespective of the factual truth or falsehood of the statements (Experiment 1 & 2), but that r...

Dual-learning theories of evaluations posit that evaluations can be automatically (i.e., efficiently, unconsciously, uncontrollably, and involuntarily) acquired. They also often assume evaluative learning processes that are impervious to verbal information. In this article, we explain that recent research challenges both assertions for three catego...

Interoceptive accuracy is frequently assessed using the Heartbeat Counting Task (HCT), requiring participants to count the number of times their heart beats. The HCT validity has been questioned, as participants may perform the task by estimating, rather than counting, their felt heartbeats. Participants could estimate the time or use their knowled...

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is one of the most widely-studied procedures for establishing and changing attitudes. The surveillance-task (Olson & Fazio, 2001) is a highly cited EC paradigm, and one that is claimed to generate attitudes without awareness. The potential for EC effects to occur without awareness continues to fuel conceptual, theoretic...

Research is surprisingly scarce on how people react to the prospect of a sure loss. Do they seek risk or focus on what is left to be saved? We addressed this question in two experiments relying on a financial decision-making framework. Specifically, we asked participants to allocate money between two options: i) a loss option where, for sure, they...

Over the past two decades, research about the role of Oxytocin (i.e., OT) in human behavior has grown exponentially. However, research efforts have not yet allowed developing a unified theory of OT effects. Relatedly, growing concerns about the robustness of conclusions drawn in the field have been raised. The present article contributes to this de...

This article provides a comprehensive review of divergent conceptualizations of the "implicit" construct that have emerged in attitude research over the past two decades. In doing so, our goal is to raise awareness of the harmful consequences of conceptual ambiguities associated with this terminology. We identify three main conceptualizations of th...

In two Commentaries, Zimprich, Nusser, and Pollatos (2019), and Ainley, Tskaris, Pollatos, Schulz, and Herbert (2019) dispute conclusions raised by Zamariola, Maurage, Luminet, and Corneille (2018) in a large sample study that questioned the validity of IAcc scores derived from the Heartbeat Counting Task (HCT). After clarifying the reliability of...

Using an online experiment, we examine to what extent people are ready to bear negative interest rates (NIR hereafter) on their savings. We find some tolerance to NIR, i.e. people being willing to let money in the bank, rather than spend it, and thereby accepting to have less at some later time than now. This tolerance strongly depends on the amoun...

Cognitive load has been shown to reduce both Evaluative Conditioning (EC) effects and CS-US pairing memory. This suggests that the successful encoding of CS-US pairings is required for eliciting EC effects. However, an alternative account may be that cognitive load impairs the encoding of individual CS or US stimuli in the first place. We examined...

How is inequality associated to social gradients in health such as overweight/obesity? Inconclusive findings and misunderstanding regarding the association between inequality and overweight/obesity impair attempts to reduce social gradients in obesity. In this chapter, we discuss various findings from research on food choices and consumption in sit...

In the literature, a well-known processing advantage for angry schematic faces was largely observed in the “Face in the Crowd” (FIC) visual search task. A debate about automaticity and guidance of these effects by emotional/perceptual features is still raging. In order to modify the emotional context, the present study used a state of expectation o...

When presented with neutral stimuli (i.e., CSs) paired with valent ones (i.e., USs), individuals may prove unable to fully reverse the influence of the US on the impression they form about the CS. In a high-powered, pre-registered experiment, we revisited this uncontrollable EC effect in the context of an instruction-based EC procedure. Specificall...

Three experiments examined the reciprocity of evaluative effects following CS-US pairing. In all three experiments, CS evaluations were assimilated to the valence of the US they were paired with (i.e., an evaluative conditioning effect), whereas US evaluations became less extreme (i.e., a US devaluation effect). Of importance, however, US devaluati...

In four studies (total N = 534), we examined the moderating impact of Interoceptive Accuracy (i.e., IAcc, as measured with the heartbeat counting task) and Interoceptive Sensibility (IS, assessed via questionnaire) on negative affect, following social exclusion or after receiving negative feedback. Results from an integrative data analysis combinin...

This research tested a central assumption of attitudinal ambivalence research: ambivalent attitude objects simultaneously trigger positive and negative evaluations. It further specifies at which stage this activation is likely to produce an evaluative conflict. Experiments 1 to 3 involved two evaluative priming paradigms, in which ambivalent stimul...

Background: Interoception is the ability to perceive one's inner bodily feelings and is thought to be associated with the capacity of recognising and experiencing emotions. Previous research on interoception and emotion regulation has presented limitations arising from the low reliability of the interoceptive measurement and provided inconsistent r...

Two high-powered experiments examined the role of evaluative response production in the extinction of evaluative conditioning (EC) by positioning EC in the procedural and conceptual framework of classical conditioning (CC). According to Rescorla's response inhibition hypothesis, more frequent responding during extinction training results in larger...

The heartbeat counting task (HCT) is among the most frequently used measure of interoceptive accuracy (i.e., IAcc). Growing concerns, however, have been raised regarding the validity of this task, as well as the validity of the IAcc scores that are derived from it. In the present study, healthy participants (N= 123) performed both the original task...

The disposition effect (DE) consists in investors' preference for realizing gains over losses. One DE account suggests that this bias stems from a belief in mean-reverting prices. This account, however, was ruled out by Weber and Camerer (1998), who reported a DE when participants were presumably made aware of expected price trends. In two experime...

The disposition effect (DE) consists in investors’ preference for realizing gains over losses. One DE account suggests that this bias stems from a belief in mean-reverting prices. This account, however, was ruled out by Weber and Camerer (1998), who reported a DE when participants were presumably made aware of expected price trends. In two experime...

A negative association between socioeconomic status (SES) and levels of overweight/obesity is consistently found in high- and middle-income countries. Yet, there is little conclusive evidence about the mechanisms driving this association. In this systematic review, we discuss and compare the results of 22 studies that examine the role of psychosoci...

Interoception, the capacity to perceive internal bodily states, is thought to influence cognitive, affective and interpersonal functioning. It is frequently assessed using the heartbeat counting task, introduced recently in interoceptive research. In this task participants are requested to count their heartbeats without relying on external cues. In...

The purpose of this study was to investigate objective performance on a nutrition label comprehension task, and the influence of numeracy and food-related involvement on this performance level. A pilot study (n = 45) was run to prepare the scales in French. For the main study (n = 101), participants provided demographic information and answered the...

Ajzen and Dasgupta (2015) recently invited complementing Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) measures with measures borrowed from implicit cognition research. In this study, we examined for the first time such combination, and we did so to predict academic persitence. Specifically, 169 first-year college students answered a TPB questionnaire and compl...

Associative attitude learning is typically viewed as a low-level process that automatically registers mere co-occurrences between stimuli, independent of their validity and relational meaning. This view invites to critically examine how attitude formation conforms to four operating conditions (i.e., unawareness, efficiency, goal independence, and u...

Interoception is the ability to feel one’s internal bodily sensations and it is related to emotional experience and the processing of emotional stimuli. Alexithymia is defined by difficulties in identifying and describing one’s emotions and externally oriented thinking. Additionally, it is linked to impairments in emotional awareness and the regula...

Research that dissociates different types of processes within a given task using a processing tree approach suggests that attitudes may be acquired through evaluative conditioning in the absence of explicit encoding of CS-US pairings in memory. This research distinguishes explicit memory for the CS-US pairings from CS-liking acquired without encodi...

Although universal, the motivation to affiliate can vary as a function of individual differences and of the characteristics of the target. Three studies explored the extent to which religious beliefs and identity are related to social affiliation motivation. Because most religions advocate affiliation and provide opportunities for frequent experien...

Past social projection research has mainly focused on target characteristics as a moderator of projective effects. The current research considers the power of the perceiver and how it affects projection of competence and warmth. In three studies, participants first rated themselves on a list of traits/preferences, then performed a power manipulatio...

This research examines the metacognitive effects of nutrition facts label clarity on food preferences. Two experiments show that, holding information content and comprehensibility constant, providing consumers with easier-to-process nutrition information increases purchase intentions for food products. The effect occurs for healthy (Study 1) but al...