The influence of instructions on generalised valence – conditional stimulus instructions after evaluative conditioning update the explicit and implicit evaluations of generalisation stimuli

ABSTRACT

Generalisation in evaluative conditioning occurs when the valence acquired by a conditional stimulus (CS), after repeated pairing with an unconditional stimulus (US), spreads to stimuli that are similar to the CS (generalisation stimuli, GS). CS evaluations can be updated via CS instructions that conflict with prior conditioning (negative conditioning + positive instruction). We examined whether CS instructions can update GS evaluations after conditioning. We used alien stimuli where one alien (CSp) from a fictional group was paired with pleasant US images and another alien (CSu) from a different group was paired with unpleasant US images. The other members from the two groups were used as GSs. After conditioning, participants received negative CSp instructions and positive CSu instructions. In Experiment 1, explicit and implicit GS evaluations were measured before and after the instructions. In Experiment 2, we used a between-participants design where one group received positive/negative CS instructions while a control group received neutral instructions. In both experiments, the positive/negative CS instructions caused a reversal of explicit GS evaluations and an elimination of implicit GS evaluations. The findings suggest that generalised evaluations can change after CS instructions which may have implications for interventions aimed at reducing negative group attitudes.

KEYWORDS:

• Evaluative conditioning
• generalisation
• instruction
• implicit evaluation
• explicit evaluation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We measured contingency awareness as a manipulation check to determine whether participants were paying attention to the experiment. Our aim was not to examine the role of contingency awareness as a moderator in conditioning or generalisation.

2 Follow-up analyses of this marginal interaction revealed that the pleasant USs were evaluated as slightly more pleasant in the valence instruction group (M = 8.02, SD = 0.96) compared to the neutral instruction group (M = 7.86, SD = 0.96), F(1, 831) = 6.44, p = .011, ηp² = .008.

3 We analysed whether the change in GS evaluations from post-acquisition to post-instruction differed between the GS paired with negative information (GSp) and the GS paired with positive information (GSu) by calculating a difference scores (GSp post-acquisition minus GSp post-instruction and GSu post-acquisition minus GSu post-instruction) which were then subjected to a paired samples t-test. In Experiment 1, the difference between GS evaluations at post-acquisition compared to post-instruction did not differ between the GSp (M = 1.53, SD = 1.93) and the GSu (M = -1.52. SD = 1.92), t = 0.223, p = 0.824, d = 0.014. In Experiment 2 (in the valanced instruction group only), the size of the GSp reversal (M = 1.52, SD = 2.09) was larger than the size of the GSu reversal (M = 1.33, SD = 2.02), t(422) = 2.49, p = .013, d = 0.121.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship to Rachel Patterson and grant DP180111869 from the Australian Research Council to Ottmar Lipp.