Scaling preferences using probabilistic choice models: is there a ratio-scale representation of subjective liking?

In two online experiments, we tested whether preference judgments can be used to derive a valid ratio-scale representation of subjective liking across different stimulus sets. Therefore, participants were asked to indicate their preferences for all possible pairwise comparisons of 20 paintings (Experiment 1) and 20 faces (Experiment 2). Probabilistic choice models were fit to the resulting preference probabilities (requiring different degrees of stochastic transitivity), demonstrating that a ratio-scale representation of the liking of both paintings and faces can be derived consistently from the preference judgments. While the preference judgments of paintings were consistent with the highly restrictive Bradley-Terry-Luce model (Bradley and Terry, Biometrika 39:324-345, 1952; Luce, 1959), the liking of faces could be represented on a ratio scale only when accounting for face gender as an additional aspect in an elimination-by-aspects model. These ratio-scaled liking scores were then related to direct evaluative ratings of the same stimuli on a 21-point Likert scale, given both before and after the pairwise comparisons. It was found in both studies that evaluative ratings can be described accurately as a logarithmic function of the indirectly derived liking scores for both types of stimuli. The results indicate that participants are able (a) to consistently judge preferences across two heterogeneous stimulus sets, and (b) to validly report their liking in direct evaluative ratings, although the numeric labels derived from direct evaluative ratings cannot be interpreted at face value for ratio-scaled liking scores.

Correcting misperceptions of exponential coronavirus growth increases support for social distancing.

The most effective way to stem the spread of a pandemic such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is social distancing, but the introduction of such measures is hampered by the fact that a sizeable part of the population fails to see their need. Three studies conducted during the mass spreading of the virus in the United States toward the end of March 2020 show that this results partially from people's misperception of the virus's exponential growth in linear terms and that overcoming this bias increases support for social distancing. Study 1 shows that American participants mistakenly perceive the virus's exponential growth in linear terms (conservatives more so than liberals). Studies 2 and 3 show that instructing people to avoid the exponential growth bias significantly increases perceptions of the virus's growth and thereby increases support for social distancing. Together, these results show the importance of statistical literacy to recruit support for fighting pandemics such as the coronavirus.

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.

No evidence of consolidation of evaluative conditioning during waking rest and sleep.

Research on evaluative conditioning (EC) shows that attitudes can emerge from co-occurrences of stimuli, and accumulating evidence suggests that EC usually depends on memory for these stimulus contingencies. Therefore, processes known to aid memory retention may be relevant for the development of stable attitudes. One such process may be memory consolidation, assumed to be promoted by waking rest and sleep. In two pre-registered experiments, we investigated whether waking rest (vs. cognitive activity, Experiment 1) and sleep (vs. wakefulness, Experiment 2) in between conditioning and measurement of EC, consolidate contingency memory and EC. Contrary to our predictions, waking rest (vs. cognitive activity) promoted neither contingency memory nor EC effects. Sleep (vs. wakefulness) decreased forgetting of contingency memory but crucially, it did not attenuate the impact of counterconditioning on contingency memory. Sleep also did not influence EC effects, nor the reduction of EC by counterconditioning. EC effects in both experiments were predicted by contingency memory. Yet, unexpectedly, EC effects occurred in the absence of contingency memory after waking rest, but neither after sleep nor in the active control conditions. Our findings emphasise a role of contingency memory in EC, but it remains unclear whether this role changes during waking rest.

Evaluative conditioning with fear- and disgust-evoking stimuli: no evidence that they increase learning without explicit memory.

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is a change in the liking of a stimulus (conditioned stimulus or CS) due to its previous pairings with another stimulus (unconditioned stimulus or US). In three experiments, we investigated if conditioning CSs with fear or disgust evoking USs increase EC effects that do not require explicit memory. Experiment 1 used images to manipulate the type of US between participants, Experiment 2 used auditory stimuli to manipulate the type of US within participants, and Experiment 3 used both images and auditory stimuli to manipulate the type of US within participants. All experiments failed to provide evidence that fear/disgust-evoking USs lead to larger EC effects without explicit memory than non-fear/non-disgust-evoking USs. Most results are in line with the assumption that the found EC effects are based on explicit memory. The results contribute to the larger goal in EC research of determining which conditions can lead to EC effects in the absence of explicit memory.

Memory and preparedness in evaluative conditioning in a smell-taste paradigm. A registered report.

We investigate two questions, (1) the relevance of memory for evaluative conditioning (EC) effects based on smell-taste pairings, and (2) the potential preparedness of smell-taste combinations for yielding EC effects. The relevance of memory for EC effects is a subject of intense research. The majority of studies that investigate the memory-EC relation use visual stimuli and typically show no or relatively small EC effects without memory. For smell-taste combinations, only a few studies exist, with mixed results regarding the role of memory in EC. The idea that there might be a preparedness of smell and taste pairings comes from classical conditioning studies showing preparedness in food aversion and from research on joint processing of smells and tastes. In Experiment 1, we report a conceptual replication of previous studies with smell-taste and picture-taste pairings. In this experiment, we found no evidence for memory-independent EC overall. In a pre-registered Experiment 2, we used a design with smells, pictures, tastes, and sounds to test the role of memory more conclusively and test the preparedness hypothesis for smell-taste pairings. The results support the preparedness hypothesis for smell-taste pairings in EC. Furthermore, as in Experiment 1, we did not find evidence for memory-independent EC.

Is there evidence for unaware evaluative conditioning in a valence contingency learning task?

In three experiments we investigated whether memory-independent evaluative conditioning (EC) and other memory-independent contingency learning (CL) effects occur in the valence contingency task (VCT). In the VCT, participants respond to the valence of a target word that is preceded by a nonword. Across trials, each nonword is mostly combined with either positive or negative targets. Schmidt and De Houwer (2012. Contingency learning with evaluative stimuli. Experimental Psychology, 59, 175-182. doi:10.1027/1618-3169/a000141) showed faster and more often correct responses on trials that conformed to this contingency. Additionally, the authors found EC on valence ratings assessed after the VCT. All effects occurred also in the absence of contingency memory. Our Experiments 1a and 1b replicated the CL effects on measures assessed during the VCT (RT, errors) and showed that they occurred in the absence of contingency memory, but they did not replicate the EC effect assessed after the VCT. In Experiment 2, we tested whether this dissociation between EC and other CL effects was due to the different phases (during vs. after VCT) with a CL measure that could be used in both phases. On this measure, the CL effect was memory-dependent after, but not during the VCT. Across measures and experiments, we thus find memory-independent CL during the VCT, but not afterwards.

The impact of valenced verbal information on implicit and explicit evaluation: the role of information diagnosticity, primacy, and memory cueing.

Previous research has shown that the presentation of valenced information about a target stimulus sometimes has different effects on implicit and explicit stimulus evaluations. Importantly, however, research examining the moderators of implicit-explicit dissociations has often failed to account for differences in the properties of the instruments used to measure implicit and explicit evaluations, preventing a clear interpretation of the results. In an effort to overcome these limitations, we conducted a study that probed the impact of valenced information on implicit and explicit evaluations as measured with procedures that were matched on methodological factors. Participants first read positive and negative information about a person named Bob and then completed measures of implicit and explicit evaluations of Bob. We examined the moderating effect of three characteristics: information diagnosticity, primacy, and whether information retrieval was cued during evaluation. Results of two high-powered experiments showed an effect of diagnosticity on implicit and explicit evaluations, replicating previous work, and extending it to new evaluation measures. We observed primacy effects on explicit evaluations in Experiment 1 and on implicit evaluations in Experiment 2. However, we did not observe memory cueing effects or any interactions. We discuss practical implications as well as implications for cognitive evaluation theories.

Single-trial evaluative conditioning can be moderated by instructed forgetting.

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is a change in the valence of a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to previous pairing with an affective unconditioned stimulus (US). Several previous studies indicate that EC is related to memory of the CS-US pairs. Previous studies, however, typically cannot distinguish between the influence of CS-US knowledge during measurement and during encoding. In addition, by measuring rather than manipulating memory, they do not test the causal effect of memory on EC. The present study employed a "directed forgetting" procedure to the EC paradigm instructing participants to either forget or remember certain CS-US pairs. We found that EC effects after single learning trials were stronger for to-be-remembered than for to-be-forgotten pairs. Manipulation checks showed that the forgetting manipulation also successfully modulated memory for the target pairs and reduced both retroactive and proactive interference on memory for other pairs. Item-based analyses further demonstrated that the size of EC depended on CS-US memory. The results suggest that EC relies on available memory during measurement of the EC effect.

Is evaluative conditioning really resistant to extinction? Evidence for changes in evaluative judgements without changes in evaluative representations.

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is defined as the change in the evaluation of a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to its pairing with a positive or negative unconditioned stimulus (US). Although several individual studies suggest that EC is unaffected by unreinforced presentations of the CS without the US, a recent meta-analysis indicates that EC effects are less pronounced for post-extinction measurements than post-acquisition measurements. The disparity in research findings suggests that extinction of EC may depend on yet unidentified conditions. In an attempt to uncover these conditions, three experiments (N = 784) investigated the influence of unreinforced post-acquisition CS presentations on EC effects resulting from simultaneous versus sequential pairings and pairings with single versus multiple USs. For all four types of CS-US pairings, EC effects on self-reported evaluations were reduced by unreinforced CS presentations, but only when the CSs had been rated after the initial presentation of CS-US pairings. EC effects on an evaluative priming measure remained unaffected by unreinforced CS presentations regardless of whether the CSs had been rated after acquisition. The results suggest that reduced EC effects resulting from unreinforced CS presentations are due to judgement-related processes during the verbal expression of CS evaluations rather than genuine changes in the underlying evaluative representations.

Sinus venous thrombosis: a differential diagnosis of postpartum headache.

In this report, we describe a patient who developed severe headache following epidural analgesia for labor and delivery. Although the epidural puncture had been reported to be uneventful, headache was initially suspected to result from an accidental dural puncture. After the headache worsened, a sinus venous thrombosis was suspected and subsequently confirmed by magnetic resonance imaging. This case highlights the difficulty of differential diagnosis of headache in the postnatal period in patients after EDA and stresses the necessity of considering alternative pathologies.

Powerful Effects of Diagnostic Information on Automatic and Self-Reported Evaluation: The Moderating Role of Memory Recall.

We sometimes learn about certain behaviors of others that we consider diagnostic of their character (e.g., that they did immoral things). Recent research has shown that such information trumps the impact of other (less diagnostic) information both on self-reported evaluations and on more automatic evaluations as probed with indirect measures such as the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP). We examined whether facilitating memory recall of alternative information moderates the impact of diagnostic information on evaluation. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants learned one diagnostic positive and one diagnostic negative behavior of two unfamiliar people. Presenting a cue semantically related to this information during evaluation influenced AMP scores but not self-reported liking scores. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that elaborative rehearsal of low diagnostic information eliminated diagnosticity effects on AMP scores and reduced them on self-reported liking scores. These findings help elucidate the role of memory recall and diagnosticity in evaluation.

What you see is what will change: evaluative conditioning effects depend on a focus on valence.

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.

Incongruency effects in affective processing: automatic motivational counter-regulation or mismatch-induced salience?

Attention is automatically allocated to stimuli that are opposite in valence to the current motivational focus (Rothermund, 2003; Rothermund, Voss, & Wentura, 2008). We tested whether this incongruency effect is due to affective-motivational counter-regulation or to an increased salience of stimuli that mismatch with cognitively activated information. Affective processing biases were assessed with a search task in which participants had to detect the spatial position at which a positive or negative stimulus was presented. In the motivational condition, positive or negative affective-motivational states were induced by performance feedback after each trial. In the cognitive activation condition, participants memorised the word "good" or "bad" during the search task. The affective incongruency effect was replicated in the motivational condition, whereas an affective congruency effect obtained in the cognitive activation condition. These findings support an explanation of affective incongruency effects in terms of automatic counter-regulation that is motivational in nature.

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).

On the effectiveness of approach-avoidance instructions and training for changing evaluations of social groups.

Prior evidence suggests that White participants who repeatedly approach images of Black people and avoid images of White people can exhibit a reduction in implicit racial bias (Kawakami, Phills, Steele, & Dovidio, 2007). In contrast, a recent study by Van Dessel, De Houwer, Gast, and Smith (2015) showed that mere instructions to perform approach-avoidance training in an upcoming phase produces a similar change in implicit evaluations of unfamiliar but not familiar social groups. We report 4 experiments that examined the replicability and generalizability of these findings for well-known social groups. Experiment 1 was a replication of the study by Kawakami et al. (2007) in a different domain (i.e., Flemish students' bias toward Turkish people) showing relatively weak evidence for small approach-avoidance training effects on implicit evaluations and explicit liking ratings. Experiment 2 replicated the finding of Van Dessel et al. (2015) that approach-avoidance instructions do not influence implicit evaluations of social out-groups and found no instruction effects even when participants first completed training with nonsocial stimuli. Experiment 3 established the presence of a small approach-avoidance training effect on implicit (but not explicit evaluations) in a large online sample. Experiment 4 directly compared approach-avoidance training and instruction effects, corroborating (a) the effect of training on implicit evaluations which was both small and subject to boundary conditions and (b) the absence of such an effect of instructions. There were again no effects on explicit evaluations. Whereas the current findings provide supportive evidence for training-based approach-avoidance effects (on Implicit Association Test [IAT] scores: meta-analytic effect size current experiments: d = 0.18, Bayes Factor = 65.22; current and prior experiments: d = 0.23, Bayes Factor = 4404.42) and evidence for the absence of instruction-based effects (Bayes Factors < 0.19), they also illustrate that there is still much uncertainty regarding the boundary conditions of these effects and the underlying mental processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The influence of misinformation manipulations on evaluative conditioning.

We tested the influence of misinformation on evaluative conditioning (EC) by giving false information about the contingencies between CS and US stimuli after a conditioning procedure. This was done by asking participants questions about the USs while inaccurately suggesting that some CSs had been paired with a US that had the opposite valence than the US it had actually been paired with. For CS-US pairs from other conditions, accurate suggestions or no suggestions at all were given to participants. This manipulation significantly moderated EC effects. For pairs that were combined with inaccurate information we found a reversed EC effect, while we found a standard EC effect for both pairs combined with no suggestions and pairs combined with accurate suggestions. Additional analyses showed that the misinformation manipulation also moderated memory for the pairs. These results show that misinformation manipulations cannot only influence explicit memory but also attitudes. Furthermore, and in line with some theories of EC, they support the relevance of explicit memory for EC effects.

Distributed practice can boost evaluative conditioning by increasing memory for the stimulus pairs.

When presenting a neutral stimulus (CS) in close temporal and spatial proximity to a positive or negative stimulus (US) the former is often observed to adopt the valence of the latter, a phenomenon named evaluative conditioning (EC). It is already well established that under most conditions, contingency awareness is important for an EC effect to occur. In addition to that, some findings suggest that awareness of the stimulus pairs is not only relevant during the learning phase, but that it is also relevant whether memory for the pairings is still available during the measurement phase. As previous research has shown that memory is better after temporally distributed than after contiguous (massed) repetitions, it seems plausible that also EC effects are moderated by distributed practice manipulations. This was tested in the current studies. In two experiments with successful distributed practice manipulations on memory, we show that also the magnitude of the EC effect was larger for pairs learned under spaced compared to massed conditions. Both effects, on memory and on EC, are found after a within-participant and after a between-participant manipulation. However, we did not find significant differences in the EC effect for different conditions of spaced practice. These findings are in line with the assumption that EC is based on similar processes as memory for the pairings.

Approach-Avoidance Training Effects Are Moderated by Awareness of Stimulus-Action Contingencies.

Prior research suggests that repeatedly approaching or avoiding a stimulus changes the liking of that stimulus. In two experiments, we investigated the relationship between, on one hand, effects of approach-avoidance (AA) training on implicit and explicit evaluations of novel faces and, on the other hand, contingency awareness as indexed by participants' memory for the relation between stimulus and action. We observed stronger effects for faces that were classified as contingency aware and found no evidence that AA training caused changes in stimulus evaluations in the absence of contingency awareness. These findings challenge the standard view that AA training effects are (exclusively) the product of implicit learning processes, such as the automatic formation of associations in memory.

Evaluative conditioning increases with temporal contiguity. The influence of stimulus order and stimulus interval on evaluative conditioning.

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is a change in valence that is due to pairing a conditioned stimulus (CS) with another, typically valent, unconditioned stimulus (US). This paper investigates how basic presentation parameters moderate EC effects. In two studies we tested the effectiveness of different temporal relations of the CS and the US, that is, the order in which the stimuli were presented and the temporal distance between them. Both studies showed that the size of EC effects was independent of the presentation order of CS and US within a stimulus pair. Contrary to classical conditioning effects, EC effects are thus not most pronounced after CS-first presentations. Furthermore, as shown in Experiment 2, EC effects increased in magnitude as the temporal interval between CS and US presentations decreased. Experiment 1 showed largest EC effects in the condition with simultaneous presentations - which can be seen as the condition with the temporally closest presentation. In this Experiment stimuli were presented in two different modalities, which might have facilitated simultaneous processing. In Experiment 2, in which all stimuli were presented visually, this advantage of simultaneous presentation was not found. We discuss practical and theoretical implications of our findings.