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The Role of Trait Inferences in Evaluative Conditioning
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Evaluative Conditioning (EC) effect is a change in evaluative responding to a neutral stimulus (CS) due to its pairing with a valenced stimulus (US). Traditionally, EC effects are viewed as fundamentally different from persuasion effects. Inspired by a propositional perspective to EC, four studies (N = 1,284) tested if, like persuasion effects, EC effects can also be driven by trait inferences. Experiments 1-2 found that promoting trait inferences (by pairing people with trait words rather than nouns) increased EC effects. Experiments 3-4 found that undermining trait inferences (by questioning the validity of those inferences) decreased EC effects. In all experiments, however , EC effects were still significant when trait inferences were invalid. Taken together, our findings (a) suggest that trait inferences can play an important role in EC effects, (b) constrain theoretical models of EC, and (c) have important implications for applied EC interventions.
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... Our results contribute to both the social psychology (impression formation) and learning psychology (conditioning) literatures. First, they highlight co-occurrence of stimuli as a pathway for establishing and changing our impressions of others (i.e., via the spatiotemporal contiguity between source and target objects; also see Moran et al., 2022). Specifically, we learned more about the context under which the manipulation of a source feature influence target traits of a target object. ...
... From a propositional perspective, inferences can be based on propositions about the co-occurrence of the source and target objects and the source feature. For instance, the propositions emerging from the pairings and the source feature (e.g., "this attractive person goes together with this other person") mixed with propositions about previous knowledge (e.g., "what goes together is usually similar") would lead to inferences about the target object (e.g., "the other person is likely to be socially competent"; see also De Houwer & Hughes, 2016;Moran et al., 2022). Interestingly, this propositional account is highly similar to attribution accounts in the impression formation literature. ...
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).
Evaluative Conditioning (EC) research investigates changes in the evaluation of a stimulus after co-occurrence with an affective stimulus. To explain the motivation behind this research, this review begins with an overview of the history of EC research, followed by a summary of the state of the art with respect to three key questions. First, how should EC procedures be used to influence evaluation? We provide a guide based on evidence concerning the functional properties of EC effects. Second, how does the EC effect occur? We discuss the possible mediating cognitive processes and their automaticity. Third, are EC effects ubiquitous outside the lab? We discuss the evidence for the external validity of EC research. We conclude that the most important open questions pertain to the relevance of EC to everyday life and to the level of control that characterizes the processes that mediate the EC effect after people notice the stimulus co-occurrence.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 74 is January 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Evaluative conditioning is one of the most widely studied procedures for establishing and changing attitudes. The surveillance task is a highly cited evaluative-conditioning paradigm and one that is claimed to generate attitudes without awareness. The potential for evaluative-conditioning effects to occur without awareness continues to fuel conceptual, theoretical, and applied developments. Yet few published studies have used this task, and most are characterized by small samples and small effect sizes. We conducted a high-powered (N = 1,478 adult participants), preregistered close replication of the original surveillance-task study (Olson & Fazio, 2001). We obtained evidence for a small evaluative-conditioning effect when “aware” participants were excluded using the original criterion—therefore replicating the original effect. However, no such effect emerged when three other awareness criteria were used. We suggest that there is a need for caution when using evidence from the surveillance-task effect to make theoretical and practical claims about “unaware” evaluative-conditioning effects.
The year 2020 marks the 25th anniversary of two seminal publications that have set the foundation for an exponentially growing body of research using implicit measures: Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, and Williams's (1995) work using evaluative priming to measure racial attitudes, and Greenwald and Banaji's (1995) review of implicit social cognition research that served as the basis for the development of the Implicit Association Test. The current article provides an overview of (1) two conceptual roots that continue to shape interpretations of implicit measures, (2) conflicting interpretations of the term implicit, (3) different kinds of dissociations between implicit and explicit measures, (4) theoretical developments inspired by these dissociations, and (5) research that used implicit measures to address domain-specific and applied questions. We conclude with a discussion of challenges and open questions that remain to be addressed, offering guidance for the next generation of research using implicit measures.
[Open Access: https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/pdf/10.1521/soco.2020.38.supp.s1]
For more than twenty-five years implicit measures have shaped research, theorizing, and
intervention in psychological science. During this period, the development and deployment of implicit measures have been predicated on a number of theoretical, methodological, and applied assumptions. Yet these assumptions are frequently violated and rarely met. As a result, the merit of research using implicit measures has increasingly been cast into doubt. In this paper, we argue that future implicit measure research could benefit from adherence to four guidelines based on a functional approach wherein performance on implicit measures is described and analyzed as behavior emitted under specific conditions and captured in a specific measurement context. We unpack this approach and highlight recent work illustrating both its theoretical and practical value.
The idea that attitudes are associations in memory has been highly influential. We highlight an alternative perspective according to which stimulus evaluation is mediated by propositional representations. Unlike simple associations, which are merely links between nodes via which activation can spread, propositional representations are units of information that specify how events are related and that have a truth value. We review research on attitude acquisition and attitude activation that was inspired by this propositional perspective. This research reveals surprising parallels between phenomena that are often assumed to be fundamentally different (e.g., evaluative conditioning vs. persuasion; implicit vs. explicit evaluation) but also interesting differences that provide the impetus for future research.
Dual-process theories of evaluative learning suggest that evaluative representations can be formed via two functionally distinct mechanisms: automatic formation of associative links between co-occurring events (associative learning) and non-automatic generation and truth assessment of mental propositions about the relation between stimuli (propositional learning). Single-process propositional theories reject the idea of automatic association formation, attributing all instances of evaluative learning to propositional processes. A central question in the debate between the two theories concerns the mechanisms underlying unqualified effects of stimulus co-occurrence when the relation between the co-occurring stimuli suggests an evaluation that is opposite to the one implied by the observed co-occurrence (e.g., sunscreen prevents skin cancer). Addressing interpretational ambiguities in previous research on the differential impact of co-occurrence and relational information on implicit and explicit measures, the current research used a multinomial modeling approach to investigate the functional properties of the effects of co-occurrence and relational information on a single measure of evaluative responses. Although the moderating effects obtained for relational information are consistent with the predictions of the two theories, the obtained properties of co-occurrence effects pose an explanatory challenge to both dual-process and single-process propositional theories. The findings demonstrate the value of multinomial modeling in providing deeper insights into the functional properties of the effects of co-occurrence and relational information, which impose stronger empirical constraints on extant theories of evaluative learning.
Recent work has shown that implicit first impressions of other people can be rapidly updated when new information about them is highly diagnostic or provides a reinterpretation of the basis of prior belief. The Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP; Payne, Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart, 2005) is one prominent implicit measure that has been widely used in this and other work. However, the status of the AMP as a measure of unintentional responding has been a matter of debate, which necessarily also raises questions about the "implicitness" of the updated responses within recent person impression research. In re-analyses of published work, we identify multimodal distributions of AMP responses that raise concerns about potential intentional influences on this task. Drawing on 8 new studies, however, we find that such patterns are not likely attributable to intentional responding (Studies 1, 2A-2B), and that methodological modifications to the AMP procedure eliminate bimodality but do not eliminate effects of rapid revision (Studies 3A-6). Furthermore, these modifications provide evidence that the rapid-revision effects reported in earlier work can be produced under suboptimal conditions such as distraction and increased vigilance against prime influence. We advocate for the continued use of judgmental misattribution as a valuable tool in the arsenal of implicit social cognition researchers, but also encourage researchers to continue to examine the distributional patterns of measures like the AMP, and what those patterns might reflect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Exposing parents to a positive classical conditioning (+CC) procedure can (a) prompt positive evaluations of children, (b) alter judgments made about children from their behavior, and (c) reduce harsh behaviors enacted toward children. Two studies explored possible limits of these effects. Results from Study 1 showed that only some +CC effects evinced in prior research emerged when the positive trait words used as the unconditioned stimuli in prior research were replaced with positive emojis. Results from Study 2 showed with positive trait word stimuli that a backward +CC procedure produced many of the same effects produced by the forward +CC procedure. These results collectively support the idea that +CC procedures may simultaneously prompt several different kinds of learning. From a practical perspective, consideration of these various kinds of learning is important to an understanding of when the use of the +CC procedure might reduce child abuse risk.
In 1998, Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz proposed that the Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures individual differences in implicit social cognition. This claim requires evidence of construct validity. I review the evidence and show that there is insufficient evidence for this claim. Most important, I show that few studies were able to test discriminant validity of the IAT as a measure of implicit constructs. I examine discriminant validity in several multimethod studies and find little or no evidence of discriminant validity. I also show that validity of the IAT as a measure of attitudes varies across constructs. Validity of the self-esteem IAT is low, but estimates vary across studies. About 20% of the variance in the race IAT reflects racial preferences. The highest validity is obtained for measuring political orientation with the IAT (64%). Most of this valid variance stems from a distinction between individuals with opposing attitudes, whereas reaction times contribute less than 10% of variance in the prediction of explicit attitude measures. In all domains, explicit measures are more valid than the IAT, but the IAT can be used as a measure of sensitive attitudes to reduce measurement error by using a multimethod measurement model.
To what extent are we beholden to the information we encounter about others? Are there aspects of cognition that are unduly influenced by gossip or outright disinformation, even when we deem it unlikely to be true? Research has shown that implicit impressions of others are often insensitive to the truth value of the evidence. We examined whether the believability of new, contradictory information about others influenced whether people corrected their implicit and explicit impressions. Contrary to previous work, we found that across seven studies, the perceived believability of new evidence predicted whether people corrected their implicit impressions. Subjective assessments of truth value also uniquely predicted correction beyond other properties of information such as diagnosticity/extremity. This evidence shows that the degree to which someone thinks new information is true influences whether it impacts implicit impressions.
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.