Changing likes and dislikes through the back door: The US-revaluation effect

Abstract

US-revaluation refers to the observation that subsequent changes in the valence of an unconditioned stimulus (US) after pairing it with a neutral, conditioned stimulus (CS) also changes the valence of the associated CS. Experiment 1 found evidence for the US-revaluation effect using an unobtrusive measure of evaluation. However, US-revaluation effects were more pronounced for positive-to-negative compared to negative-to-positive revaluations. Experiment 2 replicated this finding for self-reported evaluations, further showing that US-revaluation effects are stable over time and independent of explicit memory for the revaluating information. Using a modified paradigm, Experiment 3 ruled out method-related explanations for these findings and showed that changes in CS evaluations are correlated with parallel changes in US evaluations. These findings encourage the view of evaluative conditioning as an instance of stimulus–stimulus (S–S) rather than stimulus-response (S–R) learning. Implications for basic and applied research are discussed.

Keywords:

• Associative processes
• Attitude change
• Evaluative conditioning

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from the German Science Foundation (DFG) to the first author.

We would like to thank Joerg Wolter and Lewin Chnatta for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article, and Juliane Burghardt, Jessica Düsing, Tuba Cay, Georg Halbeisen, Sebastian Wallot, and Oliver Weigelt for their help in collecting the data.

Notes

¹Experiment 3 also included an attitude measure immediately after the CS–US pairing phase, which was identical to the one after the revaluation phase. For the sake of simplicity and to keep analyses consistent across the three studies, the main analyses in the results section are limited to the post-revaluation measure. Using the same 2 (Original Valence of US: positive vs. negative)×2 (Revaluation: opposite vs. control) ANOVA that was used for our main analyses, the pre-revaluation measure showed the expected main effect of original US valence for US evaluations (Ms = 25.61 vs. −27.73, respectively), F(1, 92) = 67.98, p<.001, η²=.425, and CS evaluations (Ms = 15.33 vs. −3.38, respectively), F(1, 92) = 15.49, p<.001, η²=.144, supporting the effectiveness of our attitude formation and CS–US pairing manipulations. No other main or interaction effects reached statistical significance (all Fs < 1.19).