Evaluative Conditioning: Past, Present, and Future.

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.

Emotion Regulation by Psychological Distance and Level of Abstraction: Two Meta-Analyses.

Self-reflection is suggested to attenuate feelings, yet researchers disagree on whether adopting a distant or near perspective, or processing the experience abstractly or concretely, is more effective. Given the relationship between psychological distance and level of abstraction, we suggest the "construal-matching hypothesis": Psychological distance and abstraction differently influence emotion intensity, depending on whether the emotion's appraisal involves low-level or high-level construal. Two meta-analyses tested the effects of psychological distance (k = 230) and level-of-abstraction (k = 98) manipulations on emotional experience. A distant perspective attenuated emotional experience (g = 0.52) but with weaker effects for high-level (g = 0.29; for example, self-conscious emotions) than low-level emotions (g= 0.64; for example, basic emotions). Level of abstraction only attenuated the experience of low-level emotions (g = 0.2) and showed a reverse (nonsignificant) effect for high-level emotions (g = -0.13). These results highlight differences between distancing and level-of-abstraction manipulations and the importance of considering the type of emotion experienced in emotion regulation.

Incidental Attitude Formation via the Surveillance Task: A Preregistered Replication of the Olson and Fazio (2001) Study.

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 effect of co-occurrence and relational information on speeded evaluation.

After co-occurrence of a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) with an affective unconditioned stimulus (US), the evaluation of the CS acquires the US valence. This effect disappears when information about the CS-US relation indicates that they are opposite in valence. In that case, people often show a contrastive effect, evaluating the CS with valence opposite of the US. We investigated whether the assimilative effect of co-occurrence persists and is only obscured by a stronger counteracting contrast effect of the inference from the CS-US opposition relation. Participants evaluated CSs that had opposite relations with the USs under time pressure, a condition that restricts inference processes more than it restricts the associative processes that might underlie the assimilative effect of co-occurrence. Evidence supporting the persistence of the assimilative effect emerged only in Experiment 2 (N = 79): Under time pressure, people evaluated creatures that ended positive sounds more favourably than creatures that ended negative sounds. However, no difference between the creatures' evaluations occurred under time pressure in Experiments 1 and 3 (Ns = 78, 460). These results are inconclusive because they might reflect equal contrastive and assimilative effects or no effects at all. We discuss further research directions to test our question.

Testing the judgment-related account for the extinction of evaluative conditioning.

Evaluative conditioning (EC) effects refer to changes in the liking of a neutral (conditioned) stimulus (CS) due to pairing with an affective (unconditioned) stimulus (US). Some research found that EC effects are resistant to presentations of the CS without the US, whereas other studies found evidence for extinction effects. A recent study found extinction of EC only when participants rated the CS before and after the CS-only presentations, but not when CS evaluation was measured once or indirectly with the evaluative priming task. In two experiments (total N = 2,181), we found no evidence that indirectly measured evaluation is sensitive to extinction, using an indirect evaluation measure with high sensitivity - the Implicit Association Test. However, unlike previous research, we found that evaluation of any stimuli (and not only the CS) before the CS-only presentations decreases self-reported EC effects. Our results are compatible with the conclusion that the extinction of EC is limited to evaluation measured directly. We discuss the theoretical implications of these results, and conclude that the specific conditions (and mechanisms) that change the direct evaluative response are yet to be clarified.

The effect of object-valence relations on automatic evaluation.

Two experiments tested the effect of co-occurrence of a target object with affective stimuli on automatic evaluation of the target when the relation between the target and the affective stimuli suggests that they have opposite valence. Participants learned about targets that ended an unpleasant noise or a pleasant music. The valence of such targets is opposite to the valence of the affective stimuli that co-occur with them. Participants reported preference for targets that ended noise over targets that ended music, but automatic evaluation measures revealed the opposite preference. This suggests that automatic evaluation is sensitive to co-occurrence between stimuli more than to the relation between the stimuli, and that relational information has a stronger influence on deliberate evaluation than on automatic evaluation. These conclusions support the associative-propositional evaluation model (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006), and add evidence regarding the sensitivity of the evaluative-conditioning effect to relational information.

Are Members of Political Out-Groups More Morally or Physically Disgusting?

Recent research has found that Americans are disgusted by anonymous members of their political out-group. Determining whether the disgust elicited by political out-group members is more physical or moral may contribute to the understating of what enables its elicitation and regulation. Building on research showing the experience of moral disgust involves relatively abstract construal and the experience of physical disgust involves relatively concrete construal, we predicted that disgust experienced toward political out-group members is more moral than physical. Two preregistered experiments (total N=854) found that (a) the effect of level of construal on the intensity of disgust from political out-group members is more similar to the effect of level of construal on moral disgust than on physical disgust, and (b) the appraisal underlying disgust from political out-group members involves more abstract than concrete construal, similar to moral disgust. We discuss implications of these findings for intergroup relations and emotion regulation.

An Assimilative Effect of Stimulus Co-Occurrence on Evaluation Despite Contrasting Relational Information.

The co-occurrence of a neutral stimulus with affective stimuli typically causes the neutral stimulus's evaluation to shift toward the affective stimuli's valence. Does that assimilative effect occur even when one knows the co-occurrence is due to an opposition relation between the stimuli (e.g., Batman stops crime)? Previous evidence tentatively supported that possibility, based on results compatible with an assimilative effect obscured by a larger contrast effect of the opposition relation (e.g., people like Batman less than expected, perhaps due to his co-occurrence with crime). We report three experiments (N = 802) in which participants preferred stimuli that stopped positive events over stimuli that stopped negative events-an assimilative effect of co-occurrence, unobscured by a contrast effect, despite comprehending the opposition relation and its evaluative implications. Our findings suggest that the assimilative effect of co-occurrence is potentially ubiquitous, not limited only to co-occurrence due to relations that suggest valence similarity.

Examining Automatic Stereotyping From a Propositional Perspective: Is Automatic Stereotyping Sensitive to Relational and Validity Information?

Research on automatic stereotyping is dominated by the idea that automatic stereotyping reflects the activation of (group-trait) associations. In two preregistered experiments (total N = 391), we tested predictions derived from an alternative perspective that suggests that automatic stereotyping is the result of the activation of propositional representations that, unlike associations, can encode relational information and have truth values. Experiment 1 found that automatic stereotyping is sensitive to the validity of information about pairs of traits and groups. Experiment 2 showed that automatic stereotyping is sensitive to the specific relations (e.g., whether a particular group is more or less friendly than a reference person) between pairs of traits and groups. Interestingly, both experiments found a weaker influence of validity/relational information on automatic stereotyping than on non-automatic stereotyping. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on automatic stereotyping.

Attitudes as propositional representations.

Attitudes are mental representations that help to explain why stimuli evoke positive or negative responses. Until recently, attitudes were often thought of as associations in memory. This idea inspired extensive research on evaluative conditioning (EC) and implicit evaluation. However, attitudes can also be seen as propositional representations, which, unlike associations, specify relational information and have a truth value. We review research on EC and implicit evaluation that tested the basic tenets of the propositional perspective on attitudes. In line with this perspective, studies show that both phenomena are moderated by relational and truth information. We discuss implications for the prediction and influencing of seemingly irrational behavior such as excessive alcohol intake and implicit racial bias.

The level of construal involved in the elicitation of core versus moral disgust.

Previous research has distinguished between core disgust, elicited by revolting physical objects like spoiled food, and sociomoral disgust, elicited by violations of social norms or moral principles. We suggest that different levels of construal are involved in the elicitation of core disgust and moral disgust. Specifically, we predicted that the elicitation of core disgust involves more concrete than abstract construal, while the elicitation of moral disgust involves more abstract than concrete construal. On that basis, we examined whether changing the level at which the eliciting situation is construed has a different effect on the intensity of core disgust and moral disgust. In Experiment 1, we found that core disgust is associated more with concreteness than abstractness, whereas moral disgust is associated more with abstractness than concreteness. Next, we found that scenarios (Experiment 2) and images (Experiment 3) that elicit core disgust are construed more concretely and less abstractly, while scenarios and images that elicit moral disgust are construed more abstractly and less concretely. In the 2 final experiments we manipulated construal level and found that the elicitation of core disgust depends on concrete construal more than the elicitation of moral disgust (Experiment 4), while the elicitation of moral disgust depends on abstract construal more than the elicitation of core disgust (Experiment 5). These findings suggest that because core disgust and moral disgust differ in the construal level of their elicitors, changing the level at which the eliciting object is construed differently affects the intensity of core disgust and moral disgust. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Can (Instructions About) Stimulus Pairings Influence Automatic and Self-Reported Evaluations in the Presence of More Diagnostic Evaluative Information?

Evaluative conditioning (EC) and persuasion are important pathways for shaping evaluations. However, little is known about how these pathways interact. Two preregistered experiments (total N = 1,510) examined effects of EC procedures (i.e., stimulus pairings) and EC instructions (i.e., instructions about stimulus pairings) on automatic and self-reported evaluations of social groups in the presence of more diagnostic information about the evaluative traits of those groups. Interestingly, both EC procedures and EC instructions still influenced automatic and self-reported evaluations when participants had read more diagnostic persuasive information. In line with predictions of propositional accounts of evaluation, EC instruction effects on automatic evaluations were not mediated by corresponding changes in self-reported evaluations. These results have theoretical implications and also highlight the important role that (instructions about) stimulus pairings have in social learning.

How actions change liking: The effect of an action's outcome on the evaluation of the action's object.

People like positive objects (e.g., fun activities) and dislike negative objects (e.g., boring activities). However, objects usually do not appear in isolation; They are often objects of an action (e.g., the boring activities were canceled). Using a wide array of stimuli and procedures, 11 experiments (N = 5,573) found that evaluation of objects is biased by the outcome of an action performed on the objects. For example, when participants read that a gene increases the likelihood of possessing the trait kindness (an action with a positive outcome), they evaluated kindness more positively than after reading the gene inhibits the trait (an action with a negative outcome). Conversely, they disliked dishonesty more after reading about genes that increased dishonesty than after reading about genes that decreased dishonesty. The effect was incompatible with logical inference from the information provided. We found evidence that misattribution of the valence of the action's outcome to the action's object contributes to this effect. These findings extend knowledge about the factors that lead to evaluative change. Importantly, the results demonstrate a recursive evaluation process: The valence of the outcome of an action on the object determines the evaluation of the object, but the valence of the outcome is already based on a previous evaluation of the object itself. We discuss the possible implications of our findings to a wide range of research domains, such as moral judgment and economic decisions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).