Evaluative conditioning and conscious knowledge of contingencies: A correlational investigation with large samples

Abstract

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is a change in the valence of a stimulus that results from pairing the stimulus with an affective stimulus. Two high-powered studies (total N = 1,161) investigated the nature of the relationship between EC and contingency awareness measured as contingency memory. Stronger EC occurred among people with more accurate and more confident memory of the pairings. Awareness was a necessary condition for EC, but EC was not necessary for awareness. Supporting a propositional account of EC, we found evidence for intentional reliance on the contingency for the evaluation of stimuli. We also found evidence that contingency memory was based both on the actual contingency and on preexisting attitudes.

Keywords:

• Evaluative conditioning
• Propositional learning
• Associative learning
• False memory

This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (R01 MH68447) to Brian Nosek and by Grant BOF/GOA2006/001 of Ghent University to Jan De Houwer.

Notes

¹ The effect sizes of the EC reported by Olson and Fazio (2001, 2002, 2006; Jones et al., 2009) were usually around d = 0.30, ranging from d = 0.14 (Jones et al., 2009, Study 1) to d = 0.37 (Olson & Fazio, 2001, Experiment 1, measured with an Implicit Association Test). The EC effect sizes in our experiments were within this range.

² Olson and Fazio (2001) also examined whether participants who did not choose the correct US in the identity memory test at least chose the US of the same valence. They found EC even without participants who showed this kind of awareness. Still, this is not the same valence awareness measure used by us and by Stahl et al. (Stahl & Unkelbach, 2009; Stahl et al., 2009). That is, Olson and Fazio did not ask the participants directly what valence was paired with each CS. Additionally, Jones et al. (2009) reported that they removed from their analyses participants who showed valence awareness in their response to an open-ended postexperimental question regarding the rules they noticed in the learning procedure. But of course, a question in an open-ended format is not the same as the valence awareness measure used by us and by Stahl and colleagues. Notice also that we probed for participants' awareness of the rules of stimuli presentations in a multiple-choice format (the manipulation awareness) and found no EC without manipulation awareness.