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The moderating role of attribute accessibility in conditioning multiple specific attributes
Abstract
Attribute conditioning (AC) refers to people's changed assessment of stimuli's (conditioned stimuli, CSs) attributes due to pairings with stimuli possessing these attributes (unconditioned stimuli, USs). Up to now, research only showed conditioning of only one attribute within a conditioning session (e.g., athleticism) and measured assessment changes in only this single attribute. The current study shows attribute-specific AC effects in multi-attribute environments and shows that attribute accessibility determines which of a US's multiple attributes are conditioned. Experiment 1 shows AC effects for artificial logos with attributes varying across USs (e.g., athletic, intelligent, or funny). Experiment 2 shows that these AC effects persist over time. Experiment 3 directly manipulated accessibility for attributes varying between and within USs (e.g., a US being sexy and familial) with a priming procedure. Priming-specific attributes prior to conditioning determined which attribute of a US was conditioned to paired CSs. We discuss theoretical implications for AC, as well as practical implications for brand image formation and advertising. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... Our research aims to contribute to the empirical and theoretical work on Attribute Conditioning (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2015, 2016Glaser & Walther, 2013;Högden & Unkelbach, 2021;Meersmans et al., 2005;Olson et al., 2009;Staats & Staats, 1957;Unkelbach & Förderer, 2018; see Unkelbach & Högden, 2019, for an overview) by extending previous research on the conditioning of multiple attributes (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014). Importantly, as Attribute Conditioning is conceptualized as a form of referential learning and by empirically following a standard one-to-one pairing in examining the transfer of multiple attributes to a single brand (as opposed to pairing multiple brands simultaneously with one attribute), our work is distinct from cue competition effects (i.e., blocking and overshadowing) in classical conditioning (e.g., Kamin, 1969;Mackintosh, 1976). ...
... Recent research in psychology has explained the meaning transfer to brands by Attribute Conditioning and has implied a much broader, yet unexplored role of Attribute Conditioning for brand image creation (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014;Unkelbach & Högden, 2019). Attribute Conditioning refers to the change in a stimuli's (CS) assessment regarding a specific attribute after having been repeatedly paired with a stimulus (US) that possesses this attribute (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2015). ...
... Attribute Conditioning refers to the change in a stimuli's (CS) assessment regarding a specific attribute after having been repeatedly paired with a stimulus (US) that possesses this attribute (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2015). Attribute Conditioning has been shown to be robust across a variety of stimuli: pictures of people, abstract shapes, and nonwords (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2011), pictures of food (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2015), and artificial brand logos (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014) have all been found to adopt the meaning of specific attributes after having been repeatedly paired with them. Transferred attributes have included concepts beyond mere personality traits such as size and softness (Glaser & Walther, 2013). ...
Attribute conditioning refers to the phenomenon that target stimuli acquire specific attributes by pairing them with stimuli possessing these attributes. We apply attribute conditioning to a marketing context where brands are often displayed with stimuli possessing semantic attributes to establish brand-attribute associations. In particular, we examine whether it is more effective from a brand image perspective to associate a brand with only one attribute, two related attributes, or two unrelated attributes. Across four experimental studies, we find that pairing a single attribute (e.g., athletic) with a brand is most effective for building brand–attribute associations and that pairing multiple, related attributes (athletic and healthy) is more effective than pairing multiple, unrelated attributes (athletic and smart). Supplementing this finding, an analysis of observational data from real brands suggests that attributing two orthogonal attributes to a brand is associated with negative effects on marketing-relevant outcomes. Our findings extend previous research on multiattribute conditioning and highlight the importance of the number and relationship between attributes for building effective brand associations.
... Conditioning effects are known to be sensitive to many moderators (see Hofmann et al., 2010, for a review). For instance, EC and AC effects are generally larger when participants correctly remember which CS and US were paired together during the pairing procedure (e.g., Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014;Stahl & Unkelbach, 2009). Moreover, EC and AC effects strongly depend on which stimulus attributes are salient during the pairing procedure. ...
... EC effects seem to emerge only when participants focus on valence during the learning phase (e.g., when they judge the likability of persons but not their geographic origin; Gast & Rothermund, 2011; see also Vanaelst et al., 2017). Similarly, when USs possess multiple attributes (e.g., athletic vs. intelligent) in AC studies, which of these attributes are conditioned depends on which are made salient during the experiment (e.g., Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014; see also Olson et al., 2009). ...
... Such a result would demonstrate that the pairing-based halo effect is "relevance-based" (i.e., similar to the standard halo effect in terms of trait selectivity). Alternatively, other types of selectivity could be observed: given that the source faces possess multiple features, it could be the case that other features are used by the participants, leading to a different trait selectivity on the target face (e.g., Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014). One likely alternative is that pairingbased effects are merely "valence-based", in line with what would be observed in the case of EC effects -where the manipulated source feature is the valence of the source object. ...
Impression formation effects – such as the halo effect – and learning effects – such as evaluative or attribute conditioning effects – are often seen as separate classes of phenomena. In a recent conceptual paper, De Houwer et al. (2019) suggested that both may actually qualify as instances of feature transformation, where a source feature (e.g., attractiveness of a face; valence of an unconditioned stimulus; US) influences judgements about a target feature (e.g., social competence of a person; valence of a conditioned stimulus; CS). In halo effects, the source and target features typically differ (e.g., a person with an attractive face is judged as more socially competent) but belong to the same object. In evaluative conditioning, source and target features are the same (e.g., a neutral CS is judged as more positive after being paired with a positive US) but belong to different objects. In this paper, we highlight a phenomenon at the crossroads of the two previous effects: feature transformation where source and target features are different (as in halo studies) and belong to different objects that are paired together (as in evaluative conditioning studies). Across six pre-registered experiments (n = 1050), we obtained evidence for this phenomenon in the context of person perception (i.e., attractiveness halo) and food perception (i.e., health halo). We also show that this type of feature transformation is influenced by several known moderators of halo and conditioning effects (beliefs about traits relationship, memory of pairings, and salience of the source feature).
... However, we propose that the mere pairing of George Clooney with a brand suffices to make this brand sexy. That is, after people observe multiple pairings of Clooney with a brand, their sexiness ratings of this brand increase (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014). We called this effect Attribute Conditioning (AC; Förderer & Unkelbach, 2015). ...
... The AC paradigm is straightforward: One repeatedly pairs stimuli that possess a clear attribute or trait (e.g., athletic, funny, humorous, attractive, educated; Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014) with initially neutral stimuli. In conditioning terms, the former are "unconditioned stimuli" (USs), the latter are "conditioned stimuli" (CSs). ...
... In addition, the nature of the CS seems to be of little consequence. We found robust AC effects using pictures of people, abstract shapes, and non-words (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2011), pictures of food (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2015), as well as self-created brand logos (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014). In addition, CSs are ideally neutral on the US attribute for psycho-metric reasons (i.e., separating AC effects from regression-to-the-mean; Fiedler & Unkelbach, 2014), although changing existing attributes should work as well (see Förderer & Unkelbach, 2016). ...
When a celebrity (e.g., George Clooney) endorses a brand (e.g., a coffee type), people’s assessment of this brand typically changes. We suggest that the mere repeated pairing of celebrities with brands imbues brands with the celebrities’ attributes. We call this effect attribute conditioning, which is, more generally, the phenomenon that people assess a stimulus’s attributes differently as a results of its pairing with another stimulus possessing that attribute. We review evidence showing that this effect goes beyond evaluative-conditioning effects, that it is not a demand effect, and that it is easily shown with many attributes (e.g., sexy, athletic, healthy) and many different stimuli (e.g., faces, shapes, brand logos). In addition, we review process evidence supporting the hypothesis that the effect is based on a memory structure that links the mental representations of the paired stimuli. We conclude with a brief outline of possible applied (e.g., marketing) and theoretical avenues for further research.
... This evidence rested on the statistical control of EC effects. A more experimental approach to establish AC beyond changes in evaluation was provided by Förderer and Unkelbach (2014). First, they showed differential AC effects for a variety of attributes (i.e., humorous, sexy, educated, athletic, and soft) with only evaluatively positive USs. ...
... The left part shows the US represented with three attributes (e.g., funny, athletic, competitive). The middle part shows a CS-US pairing; the middle part exemplifies a silent assumption, namely that across pairings, a specific US attribute (here: Attribute 2, for example: "athletic") becomes salient or accessible, which was done experimentally by Olson et al. (2009) andUnkelbach (2014). That is, across the learning trials of USs high and low on this specific attribute, the specific attribute becomes salient. ...
... The right part then shows the judgment phase; a link is now established between CS and US due to the pairings, and presenting the CS alone now co-activates the US with its salient, but also with all other attributes, and thus changes the CS assessment. This model accounts for the effects of priming specific attributes (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014;Olson et al., 2009), both at learning and at judgment. In particular, US attributes might change, become salient, or may be added or deleted at the assessment stage, which should then also influence CS assessments. ...
We present a model of attribute conditioning, the phenomenon that people’s assessment of stimuli’s specific attributes (e.g., a person’s characteristics) changes due to pairings with other stimuli possessing these specific attributes (e.g., another "athletic" person). These changes in attribute assessments go beyond evaluation changes due to these pairings (i.e., evaluative conditioning effects). We provide a short historical overview of the phenomenon and the available data. Then we present a potential mental model of the effect: We assume attribute conditioning to be a form of stimulus-stimulus learning. CS-US pairings establish an enduring referential link between CS and US. We present an associative as well as a distributed memory variant of this referential link. Based on this model, we provide the answers to the specific questions that guide the present special issue. Finally, we discuss the relation of evaluative and attribute conditioning.
... Recent evidence suggests that social perceivers may ascribe attributes like intelligence, attractiveness, or athleticism simply due to the pairing of a person with another person possessing these attributes (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014). For example, when a neutral man is repeatedly paired with an athlete, people assess this man as being more athletic than another man that was paired with non-athletic others (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2011). ...
... AC effects have been found, for example, for people's assessment of CSs' softness or size (Kim, Allen, & Kardes, 1996), gender (Meersmans, De Houwer, Baeyens, Randell, & Eelen, 2005), or color (Galli & Gorn, 2011). Further research examined boundary conditions like attribute accessibility, feature similarity, or contingency (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014, 2015Olson, Kendrick, & Fazio, 2009). ...
... Only if CSs and USs are associated, additional US information provided after conditioning can influence CS assessment. In addition, this differentiated pattern also shows that two distinct attributes were conditioned instead of mere positive valence (see also Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014). ...
Attribute Conditioning (AC) refers to people’s changed assessments of stimuli’s (CSs) attributes due to repeated pairing with stimuli (USs) possessing these attributes; for example, when an athletic person (US) is paired with a neutral person (CS), the neutral person is judged to be more athletic after the pairing. We hypothesize that this AC effect is due to CSs’ associations with USs rather than direct associations with attributes. Three experiments test this hypothesis by changing US attributes after CS-US pairings. Experiments 1 and 2 conditioned athleticism by pairing neutral men (CSs) with athletic and non-athletic USs. Post-conditioning, USs’ athleticism was reversed, which systematically influenced participants’ assessment of CS athleticism. Experiment 3 conditioned athleticism and changed USs’ musicality after CS-US pairings. This post-conditioning change affected musicality assessments of CSs but did not influence athleticism-assessments. The results indicate that AC effects are based on an associative CS-US-attribute structure.
... Olson et al. (2009) tried to condition size and speed, yet they found AC effects for size only when the attribute was primed prior to conditioning (Experiment 2) and no effects for speed at all. A study by Förderer and Unkelbach (2014) showed that priming attributes was not necessary for conditioning specific attributes. Yet, making an attribute of a US more accessible using a priming procedure moderated which of multiple US attributes were conditioned to the CS. ...
... Therefore, Experiments 2 and 3 paired CSs with only one US each to maximize the CS1s' predictive value. Experiments 4 and 5 followed the same methodology, as pairing a CS with a unique US usually leads to stronger AC effects (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014). Maximizing AC effects ensures that smaller AC effects after extinction procedures can be attributed to CSs repeatedly occurring alone (i.e., extinction), but not to decay which might be stronger for CSs paired with multiple USs. ...
... In a prior study, we found AC effects also in a categorical priming task (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2011, Experiment 3), thereby supporting the current findings and their independence of demand effects. Further, Förderer and Unkelbach (2014) found AC effects and US-revaluation effects (Förderer, submitted) that were independent of reported demand awareness and compliance. Interestingly, Förderer (submitted) found the expected AC and US-revaluation effects only for participants that were not demand aware or compliant. ...
Abstract We propose Attribute Conditioning (AC) as a form of learning that refers to changes in people's assessment of stimuli's (CSs) attributes due to repeated pairing with stimuli possessing these attributes (USs). We review the available evidence and based on this review, delineate three open questions and investigate them experimentally: a) the moderating role of CS-US similarity, b) the possibility of blocking, and c) the possibility of extinction. Five experiments conditioned health and athleticism. We measured AC effects on direct and indirect dependent variables (direct ratings and semantic misattribution). Experiment 1 shows that CS-US feature similarity does not moderate AC. Experiment 2 and 3 show that AC effects are insensitive to blocking; and Experiments 4 and 5 show that AC effects are resistant to extinction. These five experiments show that AC depends on CS-US contiguity, but not on CS-US contingency. Thereby, the study establishes AC as a simple learning phenomenon describing how people, stimuli, and concepts acquire specific attributes in people's minds due to mere pairings.
... Previous meaning transfer studies have relied on using traditional magazine ads (e.g. or requiring participants to watch a series of images on a computer screen, including images of the focal brand immediately followed by the focal celebrity (e.g. Förderer and Unkelbach 2014;Miller and Allen 2012). Distinct from these prior studies, this study examines celebrities' Instagram posts for their endorsed versus co-created brands. ...
... Further, a successful non-evaluative meaning transfer requires consumer attention and conscious processing (Förderer and Unkelbach 2014). Research has suggested that the more a celebrity is activated in the information processing of a celebrity-brand relationship, the more the brand will benefit from the relationship (Farrell et al. 2000;Seno and Lukas 2007). ...
Building upon the theory of meaning transfer, this study examines how non-evaluative associations, negative (e.g. crazy) and positive (e.g. brave), are transferred from celebrities to brands to influence brand attitudes, when celebrities and brands are associated in different ways (co-branding vs. endorsement) and when brand awareness varies (lesser-known vs. well-known brand). Additionally, to reveal the underlying mechanism of the meaning transfer effect on brand attitudes, this study tests a moderated mediation model, highlighting transferred brand belief and original brand belief as two serial mediators. Results of an online experiment confirmed the transfer of celebrity traits to brands: Changes in brand belief and attitude were consistent with the valence of the celebrity’s
traits. More importantly, such a meaning transfer effect became stronger when lesser-known brands were associated with celebrities via co-branding. This effect pattern, however, did not
hold for well-known brands. Lastly, regarding the meaning transfer mechanism, the results showed that celebrity meaning transfer first promoted the formation of brand meanings that correspond to celebrity traits, which then impacted original brand beliefs held by consumers, resulting in a change in brand attitudes. This study presents one of the earliest empirical investigations that compare the effects of celebrity endorsement and co-branding based on
the meaning transfer theory. It not only provides much-needed causal evidence that directly supports the theory but also illustrates the strategic advantages of celebrity co-branding to capitalize on celebrities’ influence.
... AC pairings have been shown to change people's stimulus assessments of "potency" and "activity" (Staats & Staats, 1957), "speed" and "softness" (Kim, Allen, & Kardes, 1996), "size" (Olson, Kendrick, & Fazio, 2009;Exp. 2), or "humor", "attractiveness", "intelligence", and "athleticism" (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014). ...
... Thus, AC effects may be generalized effects of conditioned valence on the provided rating dimension (i.e., "halo" effects; Gräf & Unkelbach, 2016;Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). To differentiate AC effects from EC, Förderer and Unkelbach (2011) showed that AC effects are still present if one controls statistically for the evaluation of a given CS (see Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014; for an experimental approach). Thus, AC cannot be fully accounted for by general liking or disliking, but is a genuine phenomenon in its own right. ...
In attribute conditioning (AC), neutral stimuli (CSs) acquire specific attributes through mere pairings with other stimuli possessing that attribute (USs). For example, if a neutral person “Neal” is paired with athletic “Wade,” participants judge Neal as more athletic compared with when Wade would be unathletic. Building on Evaluative Conditioning research, we introduced relational qualifiers between CS and US to probe the contribution of propositional processes to the AC effect. Concretely, CSs either liked or disliked USs. Four experiments (total n = 1,002) showed that these relations moderate AC effects for athleticism (“athletic” vs. “unathletic”; Experiments 1–3) and relationship status (“single” vs. “in a relationship”; Experiment 4); for example, when Neal disliked athletic Wade, he was judged as unathletic. We discuss how these findings constrain process theories of AC.
... With this in mind, we conducted three experiments. We used procedures similar to those of Hughes et al. (2020), along with stimuli and attributes typically employed in the attribute conditioning literature (see Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014). Specifically, we used a learning task wherein three individuals appeared simultaneously onscreen: a neutral target person (i.e., "Chris" or "Bob"), a tall source individual, and a short source individual. ...
We apply the shared features principle to the domain of person perception: When one person (target) shares a feature with another person (source), people will make assumptions about various other features of the target. We tested this prediction by conducting three pre-registered studies (N = 695). Participants completed a training task wherein one target shared a bridge feature with a physically tall source person while another target shared a feature with a physically short source person. We then measured target perceptions along multiple dimensions (e.g., dominance, strength) using self-reported ratings and an indirect measure (Semantic Misattribution Procedure). We found evidence for feature transfer: participants’ perceptions of a target person’s height changed in accordance with the height of the source it shared a feature with. We also found evidence for feature transformation: participants perceived a target person who shared a feature with a tall source person as stronger, more masculine, a better leader, and more dominant relative to a target person who shared a feature with a short source person. We consider the conceptual implications of our findings, their relevance for different areas of psychological science, and future research directions.
... Experiment 1 established the influence of merely repeating information about groups on decisions about group members (Exp. 1) and the increase in participants' rate in "true" judgments (i.e., increases in belief). Experiment 2 replicated the effects and excluded alternative explanations for the discrimination in terms of mere exposure (Mandler et al., 1987;Zajonc, 1968), evaluative conditioning (De Houwer & Hughes, 2020; Levey & Martin, 1975), attribute conditioning (Förderer & Unkelbach, 2014;Unkelbach & Högden, 2019), and memory effects (Hintzman & Block, 1971). ...
People believe repeated information more compared to novel information. Classic research on this repetition‐induced truth effect used trivia statements as information and truth ratings as the main DV. We investigate how repeating stereotypes about groups influence the stereotypes' believability and decisions about group members. Participants learned positive stereotypes about two groups of aliens. However, for one group, we repeated the stereotypes. Then, participants completed a mock personnel selection task based on short CVs of the aliens. Finally, participants evaluated the truth of the presented stereotypes. Experiment 1 showed a preference for the group with repeated information and increased belief in repeated information. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern and excluded alternative explanations in terms of better memory, evaluative conditioning, and mere exposure. We thereby provide evidence for the repetition‐induced truth effect in the stereotyping domain and show the influence of mere information repetition on subsequent group‐based discriminatory behavior. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
... The absence of such carry-over effects to other dimensions renders demand effects unlikely. Although recent research showed that conditioning of specific nonevaluative attributes is possible (e.g., conditioning of athleticism and other attributes; Förderer & Unkelbach, 2011Förderer & Unkelbach, , 2014Förderer & Unkelbach, , 2015Förderer & Unkelbach, , 2016), the reverse EC effects obtained in the present research were confined to evaluative dimensions. An intriguing task for future research is to figure out whether reversed EC effects can be also obtained for other judgment dimensions (e.g., athleticism or intelligence). ...
Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to changes in the evaluation of conditional stimuli (CSs; e.g., neutral faces) due to their repeated pairing with unconditional stimuli of positive or negative valence (USs; e.g., likeable or unlikeable faces). The standard EC finding is an assimilation effect; CS evaluations change in direction of US valence. In three experiments, we found systematic reversals of this standard assimilative EC effect. Neutral faces were liked more (less) after being paired with unlikable (likeable) faces when a judgment task called for contrastive CS-US relations. We found standard EC effects though when joint judgments of CS and US fostered assimilative relations. These results highlight the importance of encoding operations in EC that allow for different relational predicates between CS and US, as opposed to a purely stimulus-driven learning account. The robust standard EC effect suggests a default assimilative encoding when encoding operations are not manipulated.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether brand attractiveness or product quality mediate the impact of celebrity attachment on fans’ purchase intention. An online survey was conducted involving 248 consumers who identified themselves as members of BTS; a K-Pop popular South Korean singing group; but haven’t purchased the investigated brand endorsed by the celebrity. Attachment to celebrity was found not to directly affect intention to purchase advertised product. The impact of celebrity attachment on purchase intention was also fully mediated by brand attractiveness and product quality. Interestingly, brand attractiveness has a stronger impact on purchase intention than product quality does. Marketers should consider the use of popular celebrities with a strong connection with their fans when advertising their brands; as emotional bonding with the celebrity helps brands to be considered as attractive and high quality; which in turn can lead to purchase intention.
Extending previous research on celebrity endorsements, the study investigates whether the meaning of celebrities is transferred to endorsed brands and how transfer effects develop over time. Additionally, the moderating roles of brand experience, celebrity liking, and consumers’ age are investigated. The hypothesized effects are modeled using a propositional learning approach with an experimental repeated-measures design (panel data). Results confirm the assumed meaning transfer effect. In addition, the effects appear to be substantially stronger after about a week indicating some type of sleeper effect. Furthermore, the effects increase with increasing brand experience and celebrity liking. Adolescent consumers are not differently affected when compared to adults and controlled for the differing levels of brand experience. Results are discussed in light of propositional learning theory. Future areas of research are proposed.
Introduction In December 2010, Nespresso, the world’s leading brand of premium-portioned coffee, opened a flagship “boutique” in Sydney’s Pitt Street Mall. This was Nespresso’s fifth boutique opening of 2010, after Brussels, Miami, Soho, and Munich. The Sydney debut coincided with the mall’s upmarket redevelopment, which explains Nespresso’s arrival in the city: strategic geographic expansion is key to the brand’s growth. Rather than panoramic ubiquity, a retail option favoured by brands like McDonalds, KFC and Starbucks, Nespresso opts for iconic, prestigious locations. This strategy has been highly successful: since 2000 Nespresso has recorded year-on-year per annum growth of 30 per cent. This has been achieved, moreover, despite a global financial downturn and an international coffee market replete with brand variety. In turn, Nespresso marks an evolution in the coffee market over the last decade. The Nespresso Story Founded in 1986, Nespresso is the fasting growing brand in the Nestlé Group. Its headquarters are in Lausanne, Switzerland, with over 7,000 employees worldwide. In 2012, Nespresso had 270 boutiques in 50 countries. The brand’s growth strategy involves three main components: premium coffee capsules, “mated” with specially designed machines, and accompanied by exceptional customer service through the Nespresso Club. Each component requires some explanation. Nespresso offers 16 varieties of Grand Crus coffee: 7 espresso blends, 3 pure origin espressos, 3 lungos (for larger cups), and 3 decaffeinated coffees. Each 5.5 grams of portioned coffee is cased in a hermetically sealed aluminium capsule, or pod, designed to preserve the complex, volatile aromas (between 800 and 900 per pod), and prevent oxidation. These capsules are designed to be used exclusively with Nespresso-branded machines, which are equipped with a patented high-pressure extraction system designed for optimum release of the coffee. These machines, of which there are 28 models, are developed with 6 machine partners, and Antoine Cahen, from Ateliers du Nord in Lausanne, designs most of them. For its consumers, members of the Nespresso Club, the capsules and machines guarantee perfect espresso coffee every time, within seconds and with minimum effort—what Nespresso calls the “ultimate coffee experience.” The Nespresso Club promotes this experience as an everyday luxury, whereby café-quality coffee can be enjoyed in the privacy and comfort of Club members’ homes. This domestic focus is a relatively recent turn in its history. Nestlé patented some of its pod technology in 1976; the compatible machines, initially made in Switzerland by Turmix, were developed a decade later. Nespresso S. A. was set up as a subsidiary unit within the Nestlé Group with a view to target the office and fine restaurant sector. It was first test-marketed in Japan in 1986, and rolled out the same year in Switzerland, France and Italy. However, by 1988, low sales prompted Nespresso’s newly appointed CEO, Jean-Paul Gillard, to rethink the brand’s focus. Gillard subsequently repositioned Nespresso’s target market away from the commercial sector towards high-income households and individuals, and introduced a mail-order distribution system; these elements became the hallmarks of the Nespresso Club (Markides 55). The Nespresso Club was designed to give members who had purchased Nespresso machines 24-hour customer service, by mail, phone, fax, and email. By the end of 1997 there were some 250,000 Club members worldwide. The boom in domestic, user-friendly espresso machines from the early 1990s helped Nespresso’s growth in this period. The cumulative efforts by the main manufacturers—Krups, Bosch, Braun, Saeco and DeLonghi—lowered the machines’ average price to around US 1.3 billion AU in 2009, with 4.8 billion capsules shipped out annually and 5 million Club members worldwide, it became Nestlé’s fastest growing division (Canning 28). According to Nespresso’s Oceania market director, Renaud Tinel, the brand now represents 8 per cent of the total coffee market; of Nespresso specifically, he reports that 10,000 cups (using one capsule per cup) were consumed worldwide each minute in 2009, and that increased to 12,300 cups per minute in 2010 (O’Brien 16). Given such growth in such a brief period, the atypical dynamic between the boutique, the Club and the Nespresso brand warrants closer consideration. Nespresso opened its first boutique in Paris in 2000, on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. It was a symbolic choice and signalled the brand’s preference for glamorous precincts in cosmopolitan cities. This has become the design template for all Nespresso boutiques, what the company calls “brand embassies” in its press releases. More like art gallery-style emporiums than retail spaces, these boutiques perform three main functions: they showcase Nespresso coffees, machines and accessories (all elegantly displayed); they enable Club members to stock up on capsules; and they offer excellent customer service, which invariably equates to detailed production information. The brand’s revenue model reflects the boutique’s role in the broader business strategy: 50 per cent of Nespresso’s business is generated online, 30 per cent through the boutiques, and 20 per cent through call centres. Whatever floor space these boutiques dedicate to coffee consumption is—compared to the emphasis on exhibition and ambience—minimal and marginal. In turn, this tightly monitored, self-focused model inverts the conventional function of most commercial coffee sites. For several hundred years, the café has fostered a convivial atmosphere, served consumers’ social inclinations, and overwhelmingly encouraged diverse, eclectic clientele. The Nespresso boutique is the antithesis to this, and instead actively limits interaction: the Club “community” does not meet as a community, and is united only in atomised allegiance to the Nespresso brand. In this regard, Nespresso stands in stark contrast to another coffee brand that has been highly successful in recent years—Starbucks. Starbucks famously recreates the aesthetics, rhetoric and atmosphere of the café as a “third place”—a term popularised by urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe non-work, non-domestic spaces where patrons converge for respite or recreation. These liminal spaces (cafés, parks, hair salons, book stores and such locations) might be private, commercial sites, yet they provide opportunities for chance encounters, even therapeutic interactions. In this way, they aid sociability and civic life (Kleinman 193). Long before the term “third place” was coined, coffee houses were deemed exemplars of egalitarian social space. As Rudolf P. Gaudio notes, the early coffee houses of Western Europe, in Oxford and London in the mid-1600s, “were characterized as places where commoners and aristocrats could meet and socialize without regard to rank” (670). From this sanguine perspective, they both informed and animated the modern public sphere. That is, and following Habermas, as a place where a mixed cohort of individuals could meet and discuss matters of public importance, and where politics intersected society, the eighteenth-century British coffee house both typified and strengthened the public sphere (Karababa and Ger 746). Moreover, and even from their early Ottoman origins (Karababa and Ger), there has been an historical correlation between the coffee house and the cosmopolitan, with the latter at least partly defined in terms of demographic breadth (Luckins). Ironically, and insofar as Nespresso appeals to coffee-literate consumers, the brand owes much to Starbucks. In the two decades preceding Nespresso’s arrival, Starbucks played a significant role in refining coffee literacy around the world, gauging mass-market trends, and stirring consumer consciousness. For Nespresso, this constituted major preparatory phenomena, as its strategy (and success) since the early 2000s presupposed the coffee market that Starbucks had helped to create. According to Nespresso’s chief executive Richard Giradot, central to Nespresso’s expansion is a focus on particular cities and their coffee culture (Canning 28). In turn, it pays to take stock of how such cities developed a coffee culture amenable to Nespresso—and therein lays the brand’s debt to Starbucks. Until the last few years, and before celebrity ambassador George Clooney was enlisted in 2005, Nespresso’s marketing was driven primarily by Club members’ recommendations. At the same time, though, Nespresso insisted that Club members were coffee connoisseurs, whose knowledge and enjoyment of coffee exceeded conventional coffee offerings. In 2000, Henk Kwakman, one of Nestlé’s Coffee Specialists, explained the need for portioned coffee in terms of guaranteed perfection, one that demanding consumers would expect. “In general”, he reasoned, “people who really like espresso coffee are very much more quality driven. When you consider such an intense taste experience, the quality is very important. If the espresso is slightly off quality, the connoisseur notices this immediately” (quoted in Butler 50). What matters here is how this corps of connoisseurs grew to a scale big enough to sustain and strengthen the Nespresso system, in the absence of a robust marketing or educative drive by Nespresso (until very recently). Put simply, the brand’s ascent was aided by Starbucks, specifically by the latter’s success in changing the mainstream coffee market during the 1990s. In establishing such a strong transnational presence, Starbucks challenged smaller, competing brands to define themselves with more clarity and conviction. Indeed, working with data that identified just 200 freestanding coffee houses in the US prior to 1990 compared to 14,000 in 2003, Kjeldgaard and Ostberg go so far as to state that: “Put bluntly, in the US there was no local coffee consumptionscape prior to Starbucks” (Kjeldgaard and Ostberg 176). Starbucks effectively redefined the coffee world for mainstream consumers in ways that were directly beneficial for Nespresso. Starbucks: Coffee as Ambience, Experience, and Cultural Capital While visitors to Nespresso boutiques can sample the coffee, with highly trained baristas and staff on site to explain the Nespresso system, in the main there are few concessions to the conventional café experience. Primarily, these boutiques function as material spaces for existing Club members to stock up on capsules, and therefore they complement the Nespresso system with a suitably streamlined space: efficient, stylish and conspicuously upmarket. Outside at least one Sydney boutique for instance (Bondi Junction, in the fashionable eastern suburbs), visitors enter through a club-style cordon, something usually associated with exclusive bars or hotels. This demarcates the boutique from neighbouring coffee chains, and signals Nespresso’s claim to more privileged patrons. This strategy though, the cultivation of a particular customer through aesthetic design and subtle flattery, is not unique. For decades, Starbucks also contrived a “special” coffee experience. Moreover, while the Starbucks model strikes a very different sensorial chord to that of Nespresso (in terms of décor, target consumer and so on) it effectively groomed and prepped everyday coffee drinkers to a level of relative self-sufficiency and expertise—and therein is the link between Starbucks’s mass-marketed approach and Nespresso’s timely arrival. Starbucks opened its first store in 1971, in Seattle. Three partners founded it: Jerry Baldwin and Zev Siegl, both teachers, and Gordon Bowker, a writer. In 1982, as they opened their sixth Seattle store, they were joined by Howard Schultz. Schultz’s trip to Italy the following year led to an entrepreneurial epiphany to which he now attributes Starbucks’s success. Inspired by how cafés in Italy, particularly the espresso bars in Milan, were vibrant social hubs, Schultz returned to the US with a newfound sensitivity to ambience and attitude. In 1987, Schultz bought Starbucks outright and stated his business philosophy thus: “We aren’t in the coffee business, serving people. We are in the people business, serving coffee” (quoted in Ruzich 432). This was articulated most clearly in how Schultz structured Starbucks as the ultimate “third place”, a welcoming amalgam of aromas, music, furniture, textures, literature and free WiFi. This transformed the café experience twofold. First, sensory overload masked the dull homogeny of a global chain with an air of warm, comforting domesticity—an inviting, everyday “home away from home.” To this end, in 1994, Schultz enlisted interior design “mastermind” Wright Massey; with his team of 45 designers, Massey created the chain’s decor blueprint, an “oasis for contemplation” (quoted in Scerri 60). At the same time though, and second, Starbucks promoted a revisionist, airbrushed version of how the coffee was produced. Patrons could see and smell the freshly roasted beans, and read about their places of origin in the free pamphlets. In this way, Starbucks merged the exotic and the cosmopolitan. The global supply chain underwent an image makeover, helped by a “new” vocabulary that familiarised its coffee drinkers with the diversity and complexity of coffee, and such terms as aroma, acidity, body and flavour. This strategy had a decisive impact on the coffee market, first in the US and then elsewhere: Starbucks oversaw a significant expansion in coffee consumption, both quantitatively and qualitatively. In the decades following the Second World War, coffee consumption in the US reached a plateau. Moreover, as Steven Topik points out, the rise of this type of coffee connoisseurship actually coincided with declining per capita consumption of coffee in the US—so the social status attributed to specialised knowledge of coffee “saved” the market: “Coffee’s rise as a sign of distinction and connoisseurship meant its appeal was no longer just its photoactive role as a stimulant nor the democratic sociability of the coffee shop” (Topik 100). Starbucks’s singular triumph was to not only convert non-coffee drinkers, but also train them to a level of relative sophistication. The average “cup o’ Joe” thus gave way to the latte, cappuccino, macchiato and more, and a world of coffee hitherto beyond (perhaps above) the average American consumer became both regular and routine. By 2003, Starbucks’s revenue was US $4.1 billion, and by 2012 there were almost 20,000 stores in 58 countries. As an idealised “third place,” Starbucks functioned as a welcoming haven that flattened out and muted the realities of global trade. The variety of beans on offer (Arabica, Latin American, speciality single origin and so on) bespoke a generous and bountiful modernity; while brochures schooled patrons in the nuances of terroir, an appreciation for origin and distinctiveness that encoded cultural capital. This positioned Starbucks within a happy narrative of the coffee economy, and drew patrons into this story by flattering their consumer choices. Against the generic sameness of supermarket options, Starbucks promised distinction, in Pierre Bourdieu’s sense of the term, and diversity in its coffee offerings. For Greg Dickinson, the Starbucks experience—the scent of the beans, the sound of the grinders, the taste of the coffees—negated the abstractions of postmodern, global trade: by sensory seduction, patrons connected with something real, authentic and material. At the same time, Starbucks professed commitment to the “triple bottom line” (Savitz), the corporate mantra that has morphed into virtual orthodoxy over the last fifteen years. This was hardly surprising; companies that trade in food staples typically grown in developing regions (coffee, tea, sugar, and coffee) felt the “political-aesthetic problematization of food” (Sassatelli and Davolio). This saw increasingly cognisant consumers trying to reconcile the pleasures of consumption with environmental and human responsibilities. The “triple bottom line” approach, which ostensibly promotes best business practice for people, profits and the planet, was folded into Starbucks’s marketing. The company heavily promoted its range of civic engagement, such as donations to nurses’ associations, literacy programs, clean water programs, and fair dealings with its coffee growers in developing societies (Simon). This bode well for its target market. As Constance M. Ruch has argued, Starbucks sought the burgeoning and lucrative “bobo” class, a term Ruch borrows from David Brooks. A portmanteau of “bourgeois bohemians,” “bobo” describes the educated elite that seeks the ambience and experience of a counter-cultural aesthetic, but without the political commitment. Until the last few years, it seemed Starbucks had successfully grafted this cultural zeitgeist onto its “third place.” Ironically, the scale and scope of the brand’s success has meant that Starbucks’s claim to an ethical agenda draws frequent and often fierce attack. As a global behemoth, Starbucks evolved into an iconic symbol of advanced consumer culture. For those critical of how such brands overwhelm smaller, more local competition, the brand is now synonymous for insidious, unstoppable retail spread. This in turn renders Starbucks vulnerable to protests that, despite its gestures towards sustainability (human and environmental), and by virtue of its size, ubiquity and ultimately conservative philosophy, it has lost whatever cachet or charm it supposedly once had. As Bryant Simon argues, in co-opting the language of ethical practice within an ultimately corporatist context, Starbucks only ever appealed to a modest form of altruism; not just in terms of the funds committed to worthy causes, but also to move thorny issues to “the most non-contentious middle-ground,” lest conservative customers felt alienated (Simon 162). Yet, having flagged itself as an ethical brand, Starbucks became an even bigger target for anti-corporatist sentiment, and the charge that, as a multinational giant, it remained complicit in (and one of the biggest benefactors of) a starkly inequitable and asymmetric global trade. It remains a major presence in the world coffee market, and arguably the most famous of the coffee chains. Over the last decade though, the speed and intensity with which Nespresso has grown, coupled with its atypical approach to consumer engagement, suggests that, in terms of brand equity, it now offers a more compelling point of difference than Starbucks. Brand “Me” Insofar as the Nespresso system depends on a consumer market versed in the intricacies of quality coffee, Starbucks can be at least partly credited for nurturing a more refined palate amongst everyday coffee drinkers. Yet while Starbucks courted the “average” consumer in its quest for market control, saturating the suburban landscape with thousands of virtually indistinguishable stores, Nespresso marks a very different sensibility. Put simply, Nespresso inverts the logic of a coffee house as a “third place,” and patrons are drawn not to socialise and relax but to pursue their own highly individualised interests. The difference with Starbucks could not be starker. One visitor to the Bloomingdale boutique (in New York’s fashionable Soho district) described it as having “the feel of Switzerland rather than Seattle. Instead of velvet sofas and comfy music, it has hard surfaces, bright colours and European hostesses” (Gapper 9). By creating a system that narrows the gap between production and consumption, to the point where Nespresso boutiques advertise the coffee brand but do not promote on-site coffee drinking, the boutiques are blithely indifferent to the historical, romanticised image of the coffee house as a meeting place. The result is a coffee experience that exploits the sophistication and vanity of aspirational consumers, but ignores the socialising scaffold by which coffee houses historically and perhaps naively made some claim to community building. If anything, Nespresso restricts patrons’ contemplative field: they consider only their relationships to the brand. In turn, Nespresso offers the ultimate expression of contemporary consumer capitalism, a hyper-individual experience for a hyper-modern age. By developing a global brand that is both luxurious and niche, Nespresso became “the Louis Vuitton of coffee” (Betts 14). Where Starbucks pursued retail ubiquity, Nespresso targets affluent, upmarket cities. As chief executive Richard Giradot put it, with no hint of embarrassment or apology: “If you take China, for example, we are not speaking about China, we are speaking about Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing because you will not sell our concept in the middle of nowhere in China” (quoted in Canning 28). For this reason, while Europe accounts for 90 per cent of Nespresso sales (Betts 15), its forays into the Americas, Asia and Australasia invariably spotlights cities that are already iconic or emerging economic hubs. The first boutique in Latin America, for instance, was opened in Jardins, a wealthy suburb in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In Nespresso, Nestlé has popularised a coffee experience neatly suited to contemporary consumer trends: Club members inhabit a branded world as hermetically sealed as the aluminium pods they purchase and consume. Besides the Club’s phone, fax and online distribution channels, pods can only be bought at the boutiques, which minimise even the potential for serendipitous mingling. The baristas are there primarily for product demonstrations, whilst highly trained staff recite the machines’ strengths (be they in design or utility), or information about the actual coffees. For Club members, the boutique service is merely the human extension of Nespresso’s online presence, whereby product information becomes increasingly tailored to increasingly individualised tastes. In the boutique, this emphasis on the individual is sold in terms of elegance, expedience and privilege. Nespresso boasts that over 70 per cent of its workforce is “customer facing,” sharing their passion and knowledge with Club members. Having already received and processed the product information (through the website, boutique staff, and promotional brochures), Club members need not do anything more than purchase their pods. In some of the more recently opened boutiques, such as in Paris-Madeleine, there is even an Exclusive Room where only Club members may enter—curious tourists (or potential members) are kept out. Club members though can select their preferred Grands Crus and checkout automatically, thanks to RFID (radio frequency identification) technology inserted in the capsule sleeves. So, where Starbucks exudes an inclusive, hearth-like hospitality, the Nespresso Club appears more like a pampered clique, albeit a growing one. As described in the Financial Times, “combine the reception desk of a designer hotel with an expensive fashion display and you get some idea what a Nespresso ‘coffee boutique’ is like” (Wiggins and Simonian 10). Conclusion Instead of sociability, Nespresso puts a premium on exclusivity and the knowledge gained through that exclusive experience. The more Club members know about the coffee, the faster and more individualised (and “therefore” better) the transaction they have with the Nespresso brand. This in turn confirms Zygmunt Bauman’s contention that, in a consumer society, being free to choose requires competence: “Freedom to choose does not mean that all choices are right—there are good and bad choices, better and worse choices. The kind of choice eventually made is the evidence of competence or its lack” (Bauman 43-44). Consumption here becomes an endless process of self-fashioning through commodities; a process Eva Illouz considers “all the more strenuous when the market recruits the consumer through the sysiphian exercise of his/her freedom to choose who he/she is” (Illouz 392). In a status-based setting, the more finely graded the differences between commodities (various places of origin, blends, intensities, and so on), the harder the consumer works to stay ahead—which means to be sufficiently informed. Consumers are locked in a game of constant reassurance, to show upward mobility to both themselves and society. For all that, and like Starbucks, Nespresso shows some signs of corporate social responsibility. In 2009, the company announced its “Ecolaboration” initiative, a series of eco-friendly targets for 2013. By then, Nespresso aims to: source 80 per cent of its coffee through Sustainable Quality Programs and Rainforest Alliance Certified farms; triple its capacity to recycle used capsules to 75 per cent; and reduce the overall carbon footprint required to produce each cup of Nespresso by 20 per cent (Nespresso). This information is conveyed through the brand’s website, press releases and brochures. However, since such endeavours are now de rigueur for many brands, it does not register as particularly innovative, progressive or challenging: it is an unexceptional (even expected) part of contemporary mainstream marketing. Indeed, the use of actor George Clooney as Nespresso’s brand ambassador since 2005 shows shrewd appraisal of consumers’ political and cultural sensibilities. As a celebrity who splits his time between Hollywood and Lake Como in Italy, Clooney embodies the glamorous, cosmopolitan lifestyle that Nespresso signifies. However, as an actor famous for backing political and humanitarian causes (having raised awareness for crises in Darfur and Haiti, and backing calls for the legalisation of same-sex marriage), Clooney’s meanings extend beyond cinema: as a celebrity, he is multi-coded. Through its association with Clooney, and his fusion of star power and worldly sophistication, the brand is imbued with semantic latitude. Still, in the television commercials in which Clooney appears for Nespresso, his role as the Hollywood heartthrob invariably overshadows that of the political campaigner. These commercials actually pivot on Clooney’s romantic appeal, an appeal which is ironically upstaged in the commercials by something even more seductive: Nespresso coffee. References Bauman, Zygmunt. “Collateral Casualties of Consumerism.” Journal of Consumer Culture 7.1 (2007): 25–56. Betts, Paul. “Nestlé Refines its Arsenal in the Luxury Coffee War.” Financial Times 28 Apr. (2010): 14. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. Butler, Reg. “The Nespresso Route to a Perfect Espresso.” Tea & Coffee Trade Journal 172.4 (2000): 50. Canning, Simon. “Nespresso Taps a Cultural Thirst.” The Australian 26 Oct. (2009): 28. Dickinson, Greg. “Joe’s Rhetoric: Finding Authenticity at Starbucks.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 32.4 (2002): 5–27. Gapper, John. “Lessons from Nestlé’s Coffee Break.” Financial Times 3 Jan. (2008): 9. Gaudio, Rudolf P. “Coffeetalk: StarbucksTM and the Commercialization of Casual Conversation.” Language in Society 32.5 (2003): 659–91. Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1962. Illouz, Eva. “Emotions, Imagination and Consumption: A New Research Agenda.” Journal of Consumer Culture 9 (2009): 377–413. Karababa, EmInegül, and GüIIz Ger. “Early Modern Ottoman Coffehouse Culture and the Formation of the Consumer Subject." Journal of Consumer Research 37.5 (2011): 737–60 Kjeldgaard, Dannie, and Jacob Ostberg. “Coffee Grounds and the Global Cup: Global Consumer Culture in Scandinavia”. Consumption, Markets and Culture 10.2 (2007): 175–87. Kleinman, Sharon S. “Café Culture in France and the United States: A Comparative Ethnographic Study of the Use of Mobile Information and Communication Technologies.” Atlantic Journal of Communication 14.4 (2006): 191–210. Luckins, Tanja. “Flavoursome Scraps of Conversation: Talking and Hearing the Cosmopolitan City, 1900s–1960s.” History Australia 7.2 (2010): 31.1–31.16. Markides, Constantinos C. “A Dynamic View of Strategy.” Sloan Management Review 40.3 (1999): 55. Nespresso. “Ecolaboration Initiative Directs Nespresso to Sustainable Success.” Nespresso Media Centre 2009. 13 Dec. 2011. ‹http://www.nespresso.com›. O’Brien, Mary. “A Shot at the Big Time.” The Age 21 Jun. (2011): 16. Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You Through the Day. New York: Paragon House, 1989. Purpura, Linda. “New Espresso Machines to Tempt the Palate.” The Weekly Home Furnishings Newspaper 3 May (1993): 116. Purpura, Linda. “Espresso: Grace under Pressure.” The Weekly Home Furnishings Newspaper 16 Dec. (1991): 88. Reguly, Eric. “No Ordinary Joe: Nestlé Pulls off Caffeine Coup.” The Globe and Mail 6 Jul. (2009): B1. Ruzich, Constance M. “For the Love of Joe: The Language of Starbucks.” The Journal of Popular Culture 41.3 (2008): 428–42. Sassatelli, Roberta, and Federica Davolio. “Consumption, Pleasure and Politics: Slow Food and the Politico-aesthetic Problematization of Food.” Journal of Consumer Culture 10.2 (2010): 202–32. Savitz, Andrew W. The Triple Bottom Line: How Today’s Best-run Companies are Achieving Economic, Social, and Environmental Success—And How You Can Too. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006. Scerri, Andrew. “Triple Bottom-line Capitalism and the ‘Third Place’.” Arena Journal 20 (2002/03): 57–65. Simon, Bryant. “Not Going to Starbucks: Boycotts and the Out-sourcing of Politics in the Branded World.” Journal of Consumer Culture 11.2 (2011): 145–67. Simonian, Haig. “Nestlé Doubles Nespresso Output.” FT.Com 10 Jun. (2009). 2 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0dcc4e44-55ea-11de-ab7e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1tgMPBgtV›. Topik, Steven. “Coffee as a Social Drug.” Cultural Critique 71 (2009): 81–106. Wiggins, Jenny, and Haig Simonian. “How to Serve a Bespoke Cup of Coffee.” Financial Times 3 Apr. (2007): 10.
Two experiments investigated the effects of priming either a social category label or category-associated traits on the categorization of individuals who could be considered members of either of two competing social categories. It was hypothesized that priming a social category label would increase the use of the primed category in categorization judgments, whereas priming category-associated traits along with the category label would decrease the use of the primed category. Supporting these hypotheses, the results of two experiments showed that categorization judgments were assimilated to the primed category when only the category label was primed, but were contrasted away from the primed category when category-associated traits were primed along with the category label. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for social categorization and social stereotyping.
Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to valence changes in neutral stimuli (CSs) through repeated pairing with liked or disliked stimuli (USs). The present study examined the stability of EC effects in the course of 1 week. We investigated how this stability depends on memory for US valence and US identity. We also investigated whether CSs evaluations occurring immediately after conditioning (i.e., evaluative consolidation) are necessary for stable EC effects. Participants showed stable EC effects on direct and indirect measures, independent of evaluations immediately after conditioning. EC effects depended on memory for US valence but not for US identity. And although memory decreased significantly over time, EC effects remained stable. These data suggest that evaluative consolidation is not necessary, and that conditioned preferences and attitudes might persist even when people do not remember the concrete source anymore. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)
The authors examine the two principal mechanisms that have been proposed as possible explanations for the effects of classical conditioning procedures in attitude-shaping applications. They report two experiments that test conditioning procedures for prompting inferential beliefs, versus transferring affect, as means to influencing brand attitudes. Both studies use an established empirical paradigm for shaping brand attitudes with pictures or visual images as the unconditioned stimuli. The results indicate that brand attitudes can be conditioned using both attractive images that promote direct affect transfer and descriptive visual images that promote inferential belief formation. These data suggest that conditioning procedures can produce multiple benefits when they are applied in selecting and arranging the nonverbal cues to be featured in an advertising campaign.
Evaluative conditioning is the valence transfer from positive or negative stimuli to initially neutral stimuli through repeated co-occurrences of those stimuli. Theoretically, it should also be possible to condition non-evaluative attributes. Three experiments show the transfer of a non-evaluative attribute: By repeatedly presenting neutral people with athletic or nonathletic people, initially neutral people became more athletic while valence was controlled for statistically and experimentally. A fourth experiment generalizes the effect to shapes and nonwords as neutral stimuli. Athleticism transfer was found on direct ratings and indirect measures (a modified affect misattribution procedure and a categorical priming task). These data broaden the applicability of conditioning as a procedure for trait acquisition with important practical implications for advertising and brand image formation.
A sample of 210 published data sets were assembled that (a) plotted amount remembered versus time, (b) had 5 or more points, and (c) were smooth enough to fit at least 1 of the functions tested with a correlation coefficient of .90 or greater. Each was fit to 105 different 2-parameter functions. The best fits were to the logarithmic function, the power function, the exponential in the square root of time, and the hyperbola in the square root of time. It is difficult to distinguish among these 4 functions with the available data, but the same set of 4 functions fit most data sets, with autobiographical memory being the exception. Theoretical motivations for the best fitting functions are offered. The methodological problems of evaluating functions and the advantages of searching existing data for regularities before formulating theories are considered.
Learning has been defined functionally as changes in behavior that result from experience or mechanistically as changes in the organism that result from experience. Both types of definitions are problematic. We define learning as ontogenetic adaptation-that is, as changes in the behavior of an organism that result from regularities in the environment of the organism. This functional definition not only solves the problems of other definitions, but also has important advantages for cognitive learning research.
Whether human evaluative conditioning can occur without contingency awareness has been the subject of an intense and ongoing debate for decades, troubled by a wide array of methodological difficulties. Following recent methodological innovations, the available evidence currently points to the conclusion that evaluative conditioning effects do not occur without contingency awareness. In a simulation, we demonstrate, however, that these innovations are strongly biased toward the conclusion that evaluative conditioning requires contingency awareness, confounding the measurement of contingency memory with conditioned attitudes. We adopt a process-dissociation procedure to separate the memory and attitude components. In 4 studies, the attitude parameter is validated using existing attitudes and applied to probe for contingency-unaware evaluative conditioning. A fifth experiment incorporates a time-delay manipulation confirming the dissociability of the attitude and memory components. The results indicate that evaluative conditioning can produce attitudes without conscious awareness of the contingencies. Implications for theories of evaluative conditioning and associative learning are discussed.
In the present article we re-examine one of the most deeply entrenched assumptions in modern attitude research, namely, that implicit social cognition is a product of associations between mental representations. More precisely, we argue that the analysis of implicit social cognition in psychology is curtailed by the widespread adoption of the associative assumption. We open with a brief overview of the attitude literature, with a particular emphasis on the fundamental structure, measurement, and conceptual differences that have emerged between implicit and explicit attitudes in recent times. Thereafter we address the influence of the associative assumption in shaping our methodologies, research questions, and theories regarding implicit and explicit attitudes. In the third and final section, we offer two alternative and perhaps complementary nonassociative models for understanding implicit cognition. While the first model situates its explanation at the mental (propositional) level of analysis and the second at the functional, each potentially allows for novel theoretical and empirical predictions and insight into attitudes above and beyond the boundaries of traditional associationism.
US-revaluation refers to the observation that subsequent changes in the valence of an unconditioned stimulus (US) after pairing it with a neutral, conditioned stimulus (CS) also changes the valence of the associated CS. Experiment 1 found evidence for the US-revaluation effect using an unobtrusive measure of evaluation. However, US-revaluation effects were more pronounced for positive-to-negative compared to negative-to-positive revaluations. Experiment 2 replicated this finding for self-reported evaluations, further showing that US-revaluation effects are stable over time and independent of explicit memory for the revaluating information. Using a modified paradigm, Experiment 3 ruled out method-related explanations for these findings and showed that changes in CS evaluations are correlated with parallel changes in US evaluations. These findings encourage the view of evaluative conditioning as an instance of stimulusÁstimulus (SÁS) rather than stimulus-response (SÁR) learning. Implications for basic and applied research are discussed.
Throughout social and cognitive psychology, participants are routinely asked to respond in some way to experimental stimuli that are thought to represent categories of theoretical interest. For instance, in measures of implicit attitudes, participants are primed with pictures of specific African American and White stimulus persons sampled in some way from possible stimuli that might have been used. Yet seldom is the sampling of stimuli taken into account in the analysis of the resulting data, in spite of numerous warnings about the perils of ignoring stimulus variation (Clark, 1973; Kenny, 1985; Wells & Windschitl, 1999). Part of this failure to attend to stimulus variation is due to the demands imposed by traditional analysis of variance procedures for the analysis of data when both participants and stimuli are treated as random factors. In this article, we present a comprehensive solution using mixed models for the analysis of data with crossed random factors (e.g., participants and stimuli). We show the substantial biases inherent in analyses that ignore one or the other of the random factors, and we illustrate the substantial advantages of the mixed models approach with both hypothetical and actual, well-known data sets in social psychology (Bem, 2011; Blair, Chapleau, & Judd, 2005; Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002).
This study investigated whether evaluative conditioning (EC) effects depend on an evaluative focus during the learning phase. An EC effect is a valence change of an originally neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus or CS) that is due to the former pairing with a positive or negative stimulus (unconditioned stimulus or US). In three experiments, the task focus during the conditioning phase was manipulated. Participants judged CS-US pairings either with respect to their valence or with respect to another stimulus dimension. EC effects on explicit and implicit measures were found when valence was task relevant but not when the non-valent stimulus dimension was task relevant. Two accounts for the valence focus effect are proposed: (1) An additional direct learning of the relation of CS and evaluative responses in the valence focus condition, or (2) a stronger activation of US valence in the valence focus condition compared to the non-valent focus condition.
Evaluative conditioning (EC) is a change in the valence of a stimulus that results from pairing the stimulus with an affective stimulus. Two high-powered studies (total N = 1,161) investigated the nature of the relationship between EC and contingency awareness measured as contingency memory. Stronger EC occurred among people with more accurate and more confident memory of the pairings. Awareness was a necessary condition for EC, but EC was not necessary for awareness. Supporting a propositional account of EC, we found evidence for intentional reliance on the contingency for the evaluation of stimuli. We also found evidence that contingency memory was based both on the actual contingency and on preexisting attitudes.
Evaluative conditioning (EC) is a central mechanism for both classic and current theories of attitude formation. In contrast to Pavlovian conditioning, it is often conceptualized as a form of evaluative learning that occurs without awareness of the conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus (CS-US) contingencies. In the present research, the authors directly address this point by assessing the respective roles of US valence awareness and US identity awareness in attitude formation through EC. Across 4 experiments, EC was assessed with evaluative ratings as well as evaluative priming measures, and the impact of valence and identity awareness on EC was evaluated. EC effects on priming and rating measures occurred only for CSs for which participants could report the associated US valence, and US identity awareness did not further contribute to EC. This finding was obtained both for semantically meaningless (i.e., nonword letter sequences) and meaningful (i.e., consumer products) CSs. These results provide further support for the critical role of contingency awareness in EC, albeit valence awareness, not identity awareness.
Evaluative conditioning (EC) is obtained when an initially neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) becomes evaluated positively (negatively) after being paired with an evaluatively positive (negative) unconditioned stimulus (US). Most EC studies have paired a given CS with a single US, but EC has also been obtained when a CS was paired with multiple USs of the same valence. This study compares how both variants of CS-US pairing affect awareness for CS-US pairings and ultimately EC effects. EC was assessed directly and indirectly, using evaluative ratings and the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task. Memory for US identity and US valence was assessed to investigate effects of awareness. The multiple-US condition showed attenuated EC effects compared with the single-US condition. The direct measure showed EC effects when awareness of US valence or US identity was present. The indirect measure showed EC effects only when awareness of US identity was present. Results are discussed with regard to the role of contingency awareness in EC.
This article offers a new approach to celebrity endorsement. Previous explanations, especially the source credibility and source attractiveness models are criticized, and an alternative meaning transfer model is proposed. According to this model, celebrities' effectiveness as endorsers stems from the cultural meanings with which they are endowed. The model shows how meanings pass from celebrity to product and from product to consumer. The implications of this model for our understanding of the consumer society are considered. Research avenues suggested by the model are also discussed. Copyright 1989 by the University of Chicago.
Five experiments investigated the phenomenon that attitude formation is not confined to the co-occurrence of an attitudinal object with an evaluated experience. The pairing of a target with a (dis)liked person not only affects the evaluation of the previously neutral person but spreads to other individuals who are (pre)associated with the target (spreading attitude effect). Experiments 1 and 2 provided evidence for the spreading attitude effect in appetitive as well as aversive evaluative conditioning. Experiment 3 showed that the spreading attitude effect is a robust phenomenon resistant to extinction. Experiment 4 demonstrated that attitude spread can be transferred to 2nd-order conditioning. Finally, Experiment 5 supports the notion that the spreading attitude effect is not dependent on cognitive resources. Implications for social as well as applied psychology are discussed.
A central theme in recent research on attitudes is the distinction between deliberate, "explicit" attitudes and automatic, "implicit" attitudes. The present article provides an integrative review of the available evidence on implicit and explicit attitude change that is guided by a distinction between associative and propositional processes. Whereas associative processes are characterized by mere activation independent of subjective truth or falsity, propositional reasoning is concerned with the validation of evaluations and beliefs. The proposed associative-propositional evaluation (APE) model makes specific assumptions about the mutual interplay of the 2 processes, implying several mechanisms that lead to symmetric or asymmetric changes in implicit and explicit attitudes. The model integrates a broad range of empirical evidence and implies several new predictions for implicit and explicit attitude change.
Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to changes in the liking of an affectively neutral stimulus (the conditioned stimulus, or CS) following the pairing of that stimulus with another stimulus of affective value (the unconditioned stimulus, or US). In 3 experiments, the authors assessed contingency awareness, that is, awareness of the CS-US associations, by relying on participants' responses to individual items rather than using a global method of assessment. They found that EC emerged on contingency aware CSs only. Of note, whether the CSs were evaluated explicitly (Experiments 1 and 2) or implicitly (Experiment 3) did not make a difference. This pattern supports the idea that awareness of the CS-US associations may be required for valence acquisition via EC.
Although a considerable amount of research in personality psychology has been done to conceptualize human personality, identify the “Big Five” dimensions, and explore the meaning of each dimension, no parallel research has been conducted in consumer behavior on brand personality. Consequently, an understanding of the symbolic use of brands has been limited in the consumer behavior literature. In this research, the author develops a theoretical framework of the brand personality construct by determining the number and nature of dimensions of brand personality (Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication, and Ruggedness). To measure the five brand personality dimensions, a reliable, valid, and generalizable measurement scale is created. Finally, theoretical and practical implications regarding the symbolic use of brands are discussed.
The authors examine the two principal mechanisms that have been proposed as possible explanations for the effects of classical conditioning procedures in attitude-shaping applications. They report two experiments that test conditioning procedures for prompting inferential beliefs, versus transferring affect, as means to influencing brand attitudes. Both studies use an established empirical paradigm for shaping brand attitudes with pictures or visual images as the unconditioned stimuli. The results indicate that brand attitudes can be conditioned using both attractive images that promote direct affect transfer and descriptive visual images that promote inferential belief formation. These data suggest that conditioning procedures can produce multiple benefits when they are applied in selecting and arranging the nonverbal cues to be featured in an advertising campaign.
The author presents a conceptual model of brand equity from the perspective of the individual consumer. Customer-based brand equity is defined as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. A brand is said to have positive (negative) customer-based brand equity when consumers react more (less) favorably to an element of the marketing mix for the brand than they do to the same marketing mix element when it is attributed to a fictitiously named or unnamed version of the product or service. Brand knowledge is conceptualized according to an associative network memory model in terms of two components, brand awareness and brand image (i.e., a set of brand associations). Customer-based brand equity occurs when the consumer is familiar with the brand and holds some favorable, strong, and unique brand associations in memory. Issues in building, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity are discussed, as well as areas for future research.
Although a considerable amount of research in personality psychology has been done to conceptualize human personality, identify the ''Big Five'' dimensions, and explore the meaning of each dimension, no parallel research has been conducted in consumer behavior on brand personality, Consequently, an understanding of the symbolic use of brands has been limited in the consumer behavior literature. In this research, the author develops a theoretical framework of the brand personality construct by determining the number and nature of dimensions of brand personality (Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication, and Ruggedness). Tc, measure the five brand personality dimensions, a reliable, valid, and generalizable measurement scale is created. Finally, theoretical and practical implications regarding the symbolic use of brands are discussed.
The author presents a conceptual model of brand equity from the perspective of the individual consumer. Customer-based brand equity is defined as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. A brand is said to have positive (negative) customer-based brand equity when consumers react more (less) favorably to an element of the marketing mix for the brand than they do to the same marketing mix element when it is attributed to a fictitiously named or unnamed version of the product or service. Brand knowledge is conceptualized according to an associative network memory model in terms of two components, brand awareness and brand image (i. e., a set of brand associations). Customer-based brand equity occurs when the consumer is familiar with the brand and holds some favorable, strong, and unique brand associations in memory. Issues in building, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity are discussed, as well as areas for future research.
The present study examined the immediate and delayed effects of unobtrusive exposure to personality trait terms (e.g., "reckless," "persistent") on subjects' subsequent judgments and recollection of information about another person. Before reading a description of a stimulus person, subjects were unobtrusively exposed to either positive or negative trait terms that either could or could not be used to characterize this person. When the trait terms were applicable to the description of the stimulus person, subjects' characterizations and evaluations of the person reflected the denotative and evaluative aspects of the trait categories activated by the prior exposure to these terms. However, the absence of any effects for nonapplicable trait terms suggested that exposure to trait terms with positive or negative associations was not in itself sufficient to determine attributions and evaluations. Prior verbal exposure had little effect on reproduction of the descriptions. Moreover, no reliable difference in either evaluation or reproduction was found between subjects who overtly characterized the stimulus person and those who did not. Exposure to applicable trait terms had a greater delayed than immediate effect on subjects' evaluations of the stimulus person, suggesting that subjects may have discounted their categorizations of the stimulus person when making their immediate evaluations. The implications of individual and situational variation in the accessibility of different categories for judgments of self and others are considered.
Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to changes in the evaluation of a conditioned
stimulus (CS) due to its repeated pairing with an unconditioned stimulus (US). One of the most
debated topics in EC research is whether or not EC is dependent on contingency awareness.
In this study, we go beyond this debate by examining whether contingency awareness
mediates the impact of attentional resources and goal-directed attention on EC. Attentional
resources were manipulated by presenting CSs and USs either within the same modality or in
different modalities. Goal-directed attention was manipulated by asking participants to
respond to the CSs or to the USs. Results indicate that the effect of goal-directed attention
on EC is mediated by contingency awareness, whereas the effect of attentional resources on EC is not.
Although a considerable amount of research in personality psychology has been done to conceptualize human personality, identify the Big Five dimensions, and explore the meaning of each dimension, no parallel research has been conducted in consumer behavior on brand personality. Consequently, an understanding of the symbolic use of brands has been limited in the consumer behavior literature. In this research, the author develops a theoretical framework of the the brand personality construct by determining the number and nature of dimensions of brand personality (Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication, and Ruggedness). To measure the five brand personality dimensions, a reliable, valid, and generalizable measurement scale is created. Finally, theoretical and practical implications regarding the symbolic use of brands are discussed.
We examine semantic conditioning in a consumer context. We subliminally paired neutral ideographs with attributes. In experiment 1, the ideographs served as primes during a lexical decision task and slowed down response times to target words with the opposite semantic meaning. In experiment 2, the ideographs served as brand names of beverages, and attitudinal responses to them were less favorable when the associated attributes were incongruent with existing schemas. These results showed that semantic conditioning (1) can occur unconsciously, (2) can have significant and meaningful consequences for brand evaluation, and (3) influences subsequent attitudinal responses via conceptual disfluency processes.
Changing brand attitudes by pairing a brand with affectively laden stimuli such as celebrity endorsers or pleasant pictures is called evaluative conditioning. We show that this attitude change can occur in two ways, depending on how brands and affective stimuli are presented. Attitude change can result from establishing a memory link between brand and affective stimulus (indirect attitude change) or from direct "affect transfer" from affective stimulus to brand (direct attitude change). Direct attitude change is significantly more robust than indirect attitude change, for example, to changes in the valence of affective stimuli (unconditioned stimulus revaluation: e.g., endorsers falling from grace), to interference by subsequent information (e.g., advertising clutter), and to persuasion knowledge activation (e.g., consumer suspicion about being influenced). Indirect evaluative conditioning requires repeated presentations of a brand with the same affective stimulus. Direct evaluative conditioning requires simultaneous presentation of a brand with different affective stimuli. (c) 2010 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..
Evaluative conditioning refers to the changes in liking of an evaluatively neutral stimulus (the conditional stimulus or CS) as a result of merely pairing it with another, already liked or disliked stimulus (the unconditional stimulus or US). We examined whether other, non-evaluative stimulus properties of a US can also be associatively transferred to a CS. In a series of experiments, we tried to transfer perceptions of the gender of children and the gender of first names. We found evidence for the associative transfer of these properties but only when participants were aware of the contingencies.
Two experiments are described that investigate the effects of attention in moderating evaluative conditioning (EC) effects in a picture‐picture paradigm in which previously discovered experimental artifacts (e.g., Field & Davey, 199925.
Field , AP and
Davey , GCL . (1999). Reevaluating evaluative conditioning: A nonassociative explanation of conditioning effects in the visual evaluative conditioning paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes, 25: 211–224. [CrossRef], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [CSA]View all references) were overcome by counterbalancing conditioned stimuli (CSs) and unconditioned stimuli (USs) across participants. Conditioned responses for individuals who had attention enhanced were compared against a control group and groups for whom attention was impeded using a distracter task. In a second experiment the effects of attention were dissociated from those of contingency awareness by using backward‐masked US presentations. The results of these experiments indicate that although associative EC effects may not be disrupted by a lack of contingency awareness, attention is an important factor in establishing conditioning. These results shed some light onto the possible boundary conditions that could explain past inconsistencies in obtaining EC effects in the visual paradigm.
Implicit covariation learning, the development of simple associations without awareness, has been demonstrated repeatedly along the evaluative dimension [De Houwer, J., Thomas, S., & Baeyens, F. (2001). Associative learning of likes and dislikes: A review of 25 years of research on human evaluative conditioning. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 853–869], but associations involving other dimensions appear more difficult to learn implicitly. The present research highlights the unique properties of the evaluative dimension that may predispose it to implicit learning. We provide evidence in the first experiment that implicit covariation learning occurs along the evaluative dimension, but does not spontaneously occur along non-evaluative dimensions. In Experiment 2, implicit learning along non-evaluative dimensions occurred when participants were subliminally primed with the to-be-learned dimension. In the discussion, we integrate findings from implicit evaluative conditioning research with the broader implicit learning literature.
We argue that the semantic analysis of task-irrelevant stimuli is modulated by feature-specific attention allocation. In line with this hypothesis, we found semantic priming of pronunciation responses to depend upon the extent to which participants focused their attention upon specific semantic stimulus dimensions. In Experiment 1, we examined the impact of feature-specific attention allocation upon affective priming. In Experiment 2, we examined the impact of feature-specific attention allocation upon nonaffective semantic priming. In Experiment 3, affective relatedness and nonaffective semantic relatedness were manipulated orthogonally under conditions that either promoted selective attention for affective stimulus information or selective attention for nonaffective semantic stimulus information. In each of these experiments, significant semantic priming emerged only for stimulus information that was selectively attended to. Implications for the hypothesis that the extraction of word meaning proceeds in an automatic, unconditional fashion are discussed.
Evaluative conditioning refers to the observation that the mere contingent presentation of neutral with (dis)liked stimuli changes the valence of the originally neutral stimuli in a (negative) positive direction. Two theoretical accounts of the representational structure built up during evaluative conditioning are contrasted: intrinsic change versus referential learning. It is argued that previous findings on evaluative conditioning (for example, resistance to extinction) seem to favor intrinsic change explanations, but do not actually allow any definite conclusions. The postconditioning US-revaluation paradigm was used to obtain a more straight-forward result. In Experiment 1, a technique was developed to alter the valence of originally strongly (dis)liked USs (pictures of faces). In Experiment 2, we first presented a contingency between neutral (CS) and (dis)liked pictures of faces (US), and next applied the US revaluation technique. Contrary to expectations based on intrinsic change accounts, we observed that the postconditioning US revaluation did affect the acquired value of the CS; this result was confirmed in a 1-month follow up. Hence, we conclude that the acquired evaluative meaning of the CS is referential, ultimately relying on an association between CS and US representations.
It is widely assumed that traits primed after the encoding of person information do not lead to assimilation effects on the judgment of that person. The authors challenge this view by providing evidence that post-encoding trait primes can result in assimilative person judgments under certain conditions. In Experiments 1 and 2, we identify the conditions under which these assimilation effects occur. Experiment 1 shows the importance of participants’ goals during person information encoding: assimilation is observed when person information is encoded as part of a memorization goal (as opposed to an impression formation goal). The findings of Experiment 2 further reveal that the encoded person information should imply trait concepts rather than being merely vague with respect to the primed trait category. Finally, the results of Experiment 3 suggest that the obtained assimilation effect is driven by differential accessibility for prime-congruent person information.
Human behaviour includes an important component which may conveniently be called evaluative. Using postcard reproductions as stimulus materials, 10 volunteer subjects selected the two pictures most liked and the two most disliked. These were then used as UCSs with appropriate controls from the neutral category. The conditioning hypothesis—that a neutral stimulus followed by a positively or negatively valued stimulus will acquire the evaluative weight of the second stimulus—was supported at a highly statistically significant level. The effect of negative evaluation was demonstrably stronger than that for positive evaluation, a result consistent with our knowledge of aversive conditioning. The possibility is discussed that evaluation of the UCS by the subject, shown to be a sufficient condition for learning, may also be the only necessary condition. This would imply a model of conditioning based on affective evaluation rather than on response production.
We do not believe the claim that "evaluative conditioning is a qualitatively distinct form of classical conditioning" [Davey (1994). Behaviour Research and Therapy, 32, 291-299]. We view all classical conditioning as a learning process which leads organisms to assign a positive or negative value to previously neutral stimuli and to respond to them accordingly. The evaluative response is a necessary component of this process and hence it is central to all classical conditioning, not a separate type. Davey concentrates on a signal-based information processing view of learning, i.e. the formation of linear associations between CS and UCS of which human subjects are aware and which they can verbalize. We propose a more primitive and more general model in which stimulus evaluation (like/dislike) occurs with a minimal degree of processing, and enters into a representation of stimulus (CS and UCS) and response (CR and UCR) characteristics which is reintegrative rather than associative.
An eyetracking version of the classic Shepard, Hovland, and Jenkins (1961) experiment was conducted. Forty years of research has assumed that category learning often involves learning to selectively attend to only those stimulus dimensions useful for classification. We confirmed that participants learned to allocate their attention optimally. We also found that learners tend to fixate all stimulus dimensions early in learning. This result obtained despite evidence that participants were also testing one-dimensional rules during this period. Finally, the restriction of eye movements to only relevant dimensions tended to occur only after errors were largely (or completely) eliminated. We interpret these findings as consistent with multiple-systems theories of learning which maximize information input in order to maximize the number of learning modules involved, and which focus solely on relevant information only after one module has solved the learning problem.
Nespresso: Branding the Ultimate Coffee Experience Retrieved from: http://www.researchonline.mq An investigation of the mediational mechanisms underlying attitudinal conditioning
- S M Khamis
Khamis, S. (2012). Nespresso: Branding the " Ultimate Coffee Experience ". M/ C Journal, 15. Retrieved from: http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/ access/services/Download/mq:20875/DS01?view=true Kim, J., Allen, C. T., & Kardes, F. R. (1996). An investigation of the mediational mechanisms underlying attitudinal conditioning. Journal of Marketing Research, 33, 318–328.
Effects of US-revaluation in attribute conditioning
- S Förderer
- C Unkelbach
Förderer, S., & Unkelbach, C. (2013b). Effects of US-revaluation in attribute
conditioning. Manuscript in preparation.