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

Abstract

Throughout much of the past century psychologists have focused their attention on a seemingly simple question: how do people come to like or dislike stimuli in the environment?Evaluative Conditioning (EC) -a change in liking due to the pairing of stimuli -has been offered as one avenue through which novel preferences may be formed and existing ones altered. In the current article, we offer a new look at EC from the perspective of Contextual Behavioral Science (CBS) and, more specifically, Relational Frame Theory (RFT). We briefly review the EC literature, introduce Contextual Behavioral Science (CBS), Relational Frame Theory (RFT), and then describe a behavioral phenomenon known as arbitrarily applicable relational responding (AARR). Afterwards, we examine the relationship between EC and AARR. This novel perspective offers ways to organize existing as well as predict new EC effects, contributes to debates on "genuine" EC, human versus non-human EC, and further facilitates the development and refinement of cognitive theories of EC. Although humans may be biologically prepared to prefer certain stimuli over others, many of our likes and dislikes are learned through on-going interactions in and with the environment (De Houwer, 2007). These evaluations are thought to play a causal role in a diverse spectrum of behaviors such as consumer choices (Gibson, 2008;Hollands, Prestwich & Marteau, 2011), voting intentions (Galdi, Arcuri & Gawronski, 2008, in-group favoritism, and stigmatization (Walther, Nagengast & Trasselli, 2005), to mention just a few. In order to understand, predict, and influence these behaviors in a sophisticated manner, researchers have sought to identify the factors responsible for the formation and change of evaluative responses.Evaluative responses towards stimuli in the environment can be established in a wide variety of ways, from mere exposure (Bornstein, 1989), to socialization (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006), descriptive information (Rydell & McConnell, 2006), and category membership (Pinter & Greenwald, 2004). 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. Typically, a neutral stimulus acquires the valence of a positive or negative stimulus with which it was previously paired. For example, contiguous presentations of an unknown Pokémon character with pleasant images often results in that character being rated positively whereas pairing it with negative images results in it being rated negatively (Olson & Fazio, 2001).Over the past several decades, researchers from two intellectual traditions have studied changes in evaluative responding due to stimulus pairings from their respective scientific perspectives. On the one hand, the vast majority of this work has been conducted by 2 social and cognitive psychologists interested in the mental processes and representations that ...

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