Evaluative conditioning: Recent developments and future directions

Abstract

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is generally considered to be one of the routes via which likes and dislikes are acquired. We identify recent trends in EC research and speculate about the topics that will dominate future research on EC. Many of the recent developments in EC research were shaped by functional definitions of EC that refer only to environmental conditions, but not to mental processes and representations. These functional definitions stimulated the development of and debates between theories about the mental processes that mediate EC. These trends, as well as greater methodological and conceptual sophistication, inspired meta-conditional studies that aim at determining the conditions under which EC is characterized by certain properties. The question of whether EC depends on contingency awareness remains a central topic, albeit with a stronger link to theorizing about underlying mental processes. Other automaticity features have gained enhanced interest, as can for example be seen in research investigating whether EC is goal-independent and whether EC is resource-independent. We argue that future research would benefit from a sharper distinction between processes that operate during acquisition (i.e., when CS-US pairs are presented) and processes that operate during measurement (i.e., when the effects of CS-US pairings are assessed). We conclude with a short summary of all articles in this Special Issue, relating them to the identified trends in EC research.

Elaborated contextual framing is necessary for action-based attitude acquisition

“…1124 COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2014, 28 (6) paradigms (see Gast et al, 2012 for a review). Given that priming and learning are quite distinct psychological phenomena, it is worth exploring the role of contextual framing in both.…”

“…1120 COGNITION AND EMOTION, 2014, 28 (6) Despite increasing empirical support for these accounts in the A-B literature, these ideas are yet to be put to explicit test in the B-A tradition. Only one study to our knowledge has considered the role of evaluative coding in judgements of stimulus valence (Eder & Klauer, 2009), however, this study examined speeded stimulus categorisation rather than attitude conditioning (see Gast, Gawronski, & De Houwer, 2012, for the need to consider this distinction).…”

The influence of extinction and counterconditioning instructions on evaluative conditioning effects

“…Our results are in line with propositional models of EC but can be explained also by association formation models and dual process models of EC, provided that certain auxiliary assumptions are made. Evaluative conditioning (EC) is a change in the valence of a stimulus (conditioned stimulus or CS) that results from a previous pairing of the stimulus with another stimulus, the US (unconditioned stimulus) (e.g., De Houwer, 2007;Gast, Gawronski, & De Houwer, 2012; Levey & Martin, 1975). EC is considered to be an important way in which implicit and explicit evaluations can be changed.…”

The Moderating Impact of Distal Regularities on the Effect of Stimulus Pairings

“…However, many psychologists have focused on Evaluative Conditioning (EC) as a means of establishing and manipulating likes and dislikes (see Gast, Gawronski, & De Houwer, 2012). Broadly speaking, EC refers to a change in liking that is due to the pairing of stimuli.…”