Does Cue competition reduce conditioned liking of brands and products?

Abstract

The present studies investigated whether the visual co-presentation of a brand name and a product visual increases or decreases the acquisition of liking toward these stimuli in a conditioning paradigm. In Study 1, participants were presented with an elemental brand name, an elemental product visual, or a compound of both stimuli, along with liked faces. Results indicated that the mere pairing with the liked face led to increased liking in the elemental condition, but not in the compound condition (i.e., cue competition). Study 2 showed that this effect is due to the divided attention toward the compound, but not due to competition among conditioned stimuli (CSs) to predict the unconditioned stimulus (US).

At the crossroads: Attention, contingency awareness, and evaluative conditioning

“…In contrast, presenting both CS and US within the same modality resulted in impaired processing of CS-US pairs and therefore in weaker EC. This finding is consistent with the notion that stimuli compete for attentional resources if they are presented within the same modality (Alais et al, 2006;Duncan et al, 1997;Sweller, 1988;Walther et al, 2011). Moreover, attentional resources exerted their effect on EC independent of contingency awareness.…”

“…According to Burr, Silva, Cicchini, Banks, and Morrone (2009), "simultaneity of signals from different senses-such as vision and audition-is a useful cue for determining whether those signals arose from one environmental source or from more than one" (p. 1761). If CS and US are presented simultaneously within the same sensory modality, CS and US will compete for attentional resources, leading to less attention for each individual stimulus (Alais et al, 2006;Walther et al, 2011). The latter effect, however, may decrease if CS and US of the same modality are presented in a trace or delayed conditioning procedure (SOA > 0).…”

“…One factor that might contribute to learning in general and EC in particular is the attentional resources available for the processing of stimuli (Field & Moore, 2005;Walther, Ebert, & Meinerling, 2011). In the present study we directly manipulated attentional resources by presenting USs and CSs in different modalities in one condition and in the same modality in another condition.…”

How to like yourself better, or chocolate less: Changing implicit attitudes with one IAT task

“…First, the findings that EC does not depend on CS-US contingency awareness and that mere spatio-temporal CS-US co-occurrences (i.e., contiguity) are sufficient to provoke EC imply that it does not require full attention. Second, it is desirable that the learned association of a product and a positively valenced cue persist even when subsequently encountering the product in the absence of the appetitive US, as it is often the case in realword settings (for research on the application of EC to advertisement, see Walther, Ebert, & Meinerling, 2009). Changes in implicit attitudes based on associative learning have been demonstrated in several studies (e.g., Baccus, Baldwin, & Packer, 2004;e.g., Dijksterhuis, 2004;Gibson, 2008;Hermans, Vansteenwegen, Crombez, Baeyens, & Eelen, 2002;Karpinski & Hilton, 2001;Mitchell, Anderson, & Lovibond, 2003;Olson & Fazio, 2001;Rydell et al, 2006).…”

On the Formation and Persistence of Implicit Attitudes: New Evidence From the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP)

“…During a learning phase, unknown arbitrary stimuli (e.g., names of Pokémon characters) were repeatedly paired with preexisting UCS stimuli (e.g., positive or negative pictures or words). When subsequently tested using an IAT, participants demonstrated an implicit preference for the Pokémon characters previously paired with positive stimuli over those paired with negative stimuli (for related findings see Dijksterhuis, 2004;Gibson, 2008;Mitchell, Anderson, & Lovibond, 2003;Walther, Ebert, & Meinerling, 2011).…”