Of two minds or one? A registered replication of Rydell et al. (2006)

Abstract

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is proposed as a mechanism of automatic preference acquisition in dual-process theories of attitudes (Gawronski, B., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2006). Associative and propositional processes in evaluation: An integrative review of implicit and explicit attitude change. Psychological Bulletin, 132(5), 692-731. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.132.5.692 ). Evidence for the automaticity of EC comes from studies claiming EC effects for subliminally presented stimuli. An impression-formation study showed a selective influence of briefly presented primes on implicitly measured attitudes, whereas supraliminally presented behavioural information about the target person was reflected in explicit ratings (Rydell, R. J., McConnell, A. R., Mackie, D. M., & Strain, L. M. (2006). Of two minds forming and changing valence-inconsistent implicit and explicit attitudes. Psychological Science, 17(11), 954-958. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01811.x) This finding is considered one of the strongest pieces of evidence for dual process theories (Sweldens, S., Corneille, O., & Yzerbyt, V. (2014). The role of awareness in attitude formation through evaluative conditioning. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18(2), 187-209. doi: 10.1177/1088868314527832 ), and it is therefore crucial to assess its reliability and robustness. The present study presents two registered replications of the Rydell et al. (2006) study. In contrast to the original findings, the implicit measures did not reflect the valence of the subliminal primes in both studies.

No evaluative conditioning effects with briefly presented stimuli

“…Recent findings support a claim by the implicit misattribution theory (Jones, Fazio, & Olson, 2009) that EC effects acquired in an associative automatic fashion require a simultaneous presentation of CS and US (Hütter & Sweldens, 2013;Sweldens, Van Osselaer, & Janiszewski, 2010). If this characteristic of the learning phase is indeed necessary for automatic EC effects to occur, it could help explain why recent replication studies did not find an EC effect in a sequential learning paradigm (Heycke et al, 2018). Studies showing the need for a simultaneous CS-US presentation for associative automatic EC effects, however, did not use a subliminal presentation schedule.…”

“…A number of studies empirically support the notion of EC effects with subliminally presented stimuli (e.g., Dijksterhuis, 2004;Niedenthal, 1990;Rydell, McConnell, Mackie, & Strain, 2006). Most of these studies, however, have been criticized on methodological grounds (e.g., manipulation of US valence between participants allowing for mood differences between groups as an explanation for evaluation differences; Sweldens et al, 2014) or could not be replicated by an independent lab (Heycke, Gehrmann, Haaf, & Stahl, 2018).…”

(Biased) Grading of Students’ Performance: Students’ Names, Performance Level, and Implicit Attitudes

“…In this case, implicit attitudes are possibly of great importance because they are automatic evaluations ( Gawronski and Bodenhausen, 2006 ). They can be automatically activated and are spontaneous evaluations ( van den Bergh et al, 2010 ).…”

How associative is evaluative conditioning? An empirical investigation at the attitude acquisition and attitude change stages

“…Evidence is however accumulating that questions the existence of qualitative differences between attitudes inferred from direct and indirect measures. On the one hand, effects consistent with a single-learning approach were obtained on indirect measures (e.g., Bading, Stahl, & Rothermund, unpublished;Heycke et al, 2018;Kurdi & Banaji, 2017;Pleyers et al, 2007;). On the other hand, experiments reporting effects claimed to result from associative learning relied on direct evaluative measure (e.g., Jones et al, 2009;Sweldens et al, 2010).…”

“…Although this experiment has not been replicated (Heycke, Gehrmann, Haaf, & Stahl, 2018;Rosocha & Balas, 2017), its underlying rationale illustrates two major assumptions that can be found in the dual-process approach: (1) there are two independent learning processes, (2) that are sensitive to distinct operating conditions (i.e., conscious-dependent and independent). Many dual-learning models, such as the Systems of Evaluation Model (or SEM, McConnell & Rydell, 2014), go the extra step and assume that propositional and associative learning preferentially impact direct and indirect evaluative measures, respectively.…”