Recoding processes can influence the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) in a way that impedes an unequivocal interpretation of the resulting compatibility effects. We present a modified version of the IAT that aims to eliminate recoding, the IAT-RF (short for "IAT-recoding free"). In the IAT-RF, compatible and incompatible assignments of categories to responses switch randomly between trials within a single experimental block. Abandoning an extended sequence of consistent category-response mappings undermines recoding processes in the IAT-RF. Two experiments reveal that the IAT-RF is capable of assessing compatibility effects between the nominally defined categories of the task and effectively prevents recoding. By enforcing a processing of the stimuli in terms of their task-relevant category membership, the IAT-RF eliminates the confounding of compatibility effects with task switch costs and becomes immune against biased selections of stimuli.

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.

A Diffusion Model AnalysisSequential priming procedures play a major role in Cognitive Psychology and related disciplines. For example, priming techniques are used to assess associative structures in semantic memory (e.g., Collins & Loftus, 1975;Neely, 1977;Rosch, 1975), to analyze subliminal semantic processing (e.g., Draine & Greenwald, 1998;Klinger, Burton, & Pitts, 2000;Marcel, 1983), or to investigate the mental basis of attitudes, prejudice, and stereotyping (Blair & Banaji, 1996;Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986; Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 1997, 2001a. With different sequential priming paradigms it has been shown that the processing of an irrelevant prime stimulus influences the processing ofor the responding to-a subsequently presented target stimulus. Typically, responses are faster and more accurate if prime and target are related.Despite these similarities, there are also important differences between paradigms.First, relatedness of prime and target can be based on many dimensions, including semantic relatedness, associations, similarity, and others. We are primarily interested here in associative and semantic relations between prime and target. Items are semantically related when they belong to the same category and thus share semantic properties (e.g., cat and cow are mammals) or when they are functionally related (e.g., broom and floor are related because brooms are used to sweep floors). Items are considered to be associated when a large percentage of people give the target as the first word they think of in response to the prime (see Moss, Ostrin, Tyler, & Marslen-Wilson, 1995, for an elaborate discussion of the distinction between semantic and associative priming). In addition to the relatedness dimension, priming paradigms differ in the type of task that is to be performed on the targets:Most paradigms use the lexical decision task (Meyer & Schvaneveldt, 1971;Neely, 1977; see also Gaertner & McLaughlin, 1983;Wentura, 2000; Wittenbrink et al., 1997 Wittenbrink et al., , 2001a & Hymes, 1996;Hermans, De Houwer, & Eelen, 1994), semantic or affective categorization tasks (e.g., De Houwer, Hermans, Rothermund, & Wentura, 2002;Fazio et al., 1986;Klinger et al., 2000), and verification tasks (Collins & Quillian, 1969;Meyer, 1970; see also Dovidio, Evans, & Tyler, 1986). A structural taxonomyIn this regard it is helpful to introduce a structural taxonomy of priming designs that distinguishes between semantic priming and response priming (see also Wentura & Degner, 2010). In semantic priming, the relationship of interest (e.g., whether prime and target are associatively related or not) is varied orthogonally to the response categories: For example, in a semantic priming design using the lexical decision task, targets that are preceded by associatively related primes as well as targets that are preceded by unrelated primes require a word-response. By way of contrast, in response priming designs, primes are at the same time congruent or incongruent to the target and to the response that ha...

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Building on the intriguing findings of Peters and Gawronski (2011, Experiment 3), we examined the conditions under which relational information (i.e., information about how two stimuli are related) moderates evaluative conditioning (EC; i.e., the effect of stimulus pairing on liking). In Experiment 1, participants saw stimulus pairs that consisted of a novel nonword (conditioned stimulus; CS) and a known positive or negative word (unconditioned stimulus; US). Before or after the pairings, participants were told that the nonword had the opposite meaning to the word with which it was paired. Subsequent measures of the implicit evaluation of the nonwords revealed that nonwords paired with positive words were liked less than nonwords paired with negative words, but only when the relational information was presented before the CS-US pairings. In a second experiment, participants were first informed that the CS and US of each pair were related in one way (e.g., that they have the same meaning). Afterwards, this information was either confirmed (e.g., that they indeed have the same meaning) or reversed (e.g., that they actually have an opposite meaning). Whereas the first relational information had more impact on implicit evaluations than on explicit evaluations, the reverse was true for the second relational information. Moreover, informing participants that CS and US were equivalent produced the same effects as pairing CS and US without providing explicit relational information, thus suggesting that the mere co-occurrence of CS and US is treated as a cue for equivalence of CS and US. Implications for mental process models of EC are discussed.

Prior research suggests that repeatedly approaching or avoiding a certain stimulus changes the liking of this stimulus. We investigated whether these effects of approach and avoidance training occur also when participants do not perform these actions but are merely instructed about the stimulus-action contingencies. Stimulus evaluations were registered using both implicit (Implicit Association Test and evaluative priming) and explicit measures (valence ratings). Instruction-based approach-avoidance effects were observed for relatively neutral fictitious social groups (i.e., Niffites and Luupites), but not for clearly valenced well-known social groups (i.e., Blacks and Whites). We conclude that instructions to approach or avoid stimuli can provide sufficient bases for establishing both implicit and explicit evaluations of novel stimuli and discuss several possible reasons for why similar instruction-based approach-avoidance effects were not found for valenced well-known stimuli.

Previous research has shown that linking approach or avoidance actions to novel stimuli through mere instructions causes changes in the implicit evaluation of these stimuli even when the actions are never performed. In two high-powered experiments (total N = 1147), we examined whether effects of approach-avoidance instructions on implicit evaluations are mediated by changes in explicit evaluations. Participants first received information about the evaluative properties of two fictitious social groups (e.g., Niffites are good; Luupites are bad) and then received instructions to approach one group and avoid the other group. We observed an effect of approach-avoidance instructions on implicit but not explicit evaluations of the groups, even when these instructions were incompatible with the previously obtained evaluative information. These results indicate that approach-avoidance instructions allow for unintentional changes in implicit evaluations. We discuss implications for current theories of implicit evaluation.

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 selfreported 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 judgment-related processes during the verbal expression of CS evaluations rather than genuine changes in the underlying evaluative representations.