The relative effectiveness of conditioning one or two attributes to a brand.

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. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

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 Role of Relational Qualifiers in Attribute Conditioning: Does Disliking an Athletic Person Make You Unathletic?

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.

Attitudes from mere co-occurrences are guided by differentiation.

People often form attitudes about objects, individuals, or groups by examining and comparing their attributes. Such attribute-based attitude formation is guided by a differentiation principle: Whether people come to like or dislike an attitude object depends on the object's attributes that differentiate it from other objects. Attributes that are redundant with previously encountered attitude objects are typically cancelled out. We tested whether the same differentiation principle applies to co-occurrence-based attitude formation, also known as Evaluative Conditioning. This form of attitude formation describes the phenomenon that attitudes are influenced by positive or negative stimuli that have co-occurred with attitude object, but which are not inherent attributes of the attitude object itself. Across 7 experiments (N = 1611), we consistently found that co-occurrence-based attitude formation is guided by the same differentiation principle as attribute-based attitude formation. Specifically, participants' attitudes toward unknown brands were most strongly influenced by positive or negative stimuli that distinctly co-occurred with a specific brand, and that differentiated that brand from previously encountered ones. Stimuli that redundantly co-occurred with multiple brands had weaker influences on brand attitudes. The results further suggest that differentiation operates at the learning stage during which distinct stimulus co-occurrences enjoy a processing advantage. We discuss the present findings' theoretical and practical implications for attitude formation and identify differentiation as a possible cause of biased attitudes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Similarity-based and rule-based generalisation in the acquisition of attitudes via evaluative conditioning.

Generalisation in learning means that learning with one particular stimulus influences responding to other novel stimuli. Such generalisation effects have largely been overlooked within research on attitude acquisition via Evaluative Conditioning (i.e. EC effects). In five experiments, we investigated whether and when generalisation of EC effects is based on similarity or on abstract rules. Experiments 1, 2a, 2b and 3 showed that participants who abstracted a rule during the learning phase used that rule for category judgments of novel stimuli. However, evaluative ratings of the same stimuli were unaffected by the learned rule but followed the similarity to learned stimuli. Experiment 4 showed that this similarity-based pattern of generalisation is not specific to evaluative ratings. Rather, resemblance between judgment task and learning task seems to determine whether acquired rules are taken into account. We discuss how dual-process and single-process models of EC may account for the obtained generalisation results.

Does evaluative conditioning depend on awareness? Evidence from a continuous flash suppression paradigm.

The role of awareness in evaluative learning has been thoroughly investigated with a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. We investigated evaluative conditioning (EC) without awareness with an approach that conceptually provides optimal conditions for unaware learning - the Continuous Flash Suppression paradigm (CFS). In CFS, a stimulus presented to one eye can be rendered invisible for a prolonged duration by presenting a high-contrast dynamic pattern to the other eye. The suppressed stimulus is nevertheless processed. First, Experiment 1 established EC effects in a pseudo-CFS setup without suppression. Experiment 2 then employed CFS to suppress conditioned stimuli (CSs) from awareness while the unconditioned stimuli (USs) were visible. While Experiment 1 and 2 used a between-participants manipulation of CS suppression, Experiments 3 and 4 both manipulated suppression within participants. We observed EC effects when CSs were not suppressed, but found no EC effects when the CS was suppressed from awareness. We relate our finding to previous research and discuss theoretical implications for EC. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).