ABSTRACT
Evaluative Conditioning (EC) is commonly defined as the change in liking of a stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) due to its pairings with an affective unconditioned stimulus (US). In Experiment 1, we investigated effects of repeated stimulus pairings on affective responses, i.e. valence and arousal ratings, pupil size, and duration estimation. After repeatedly pairing the CSs with affective USs, a consistent pattern of affective responses emerged: The CSnegative was rated as being more negative and more arousing, resulted in larger pupils, and was temporally overestimated compared to the CSneutral. In Experiment 2, the influence of a mere instruction about the contingency between a CS and US on affective responses was examined. After mere instruction about upcoming pairings between the CS and US, subjective ratings also changed, but there was neither evidence for differential pupillary responses nor for differential temporal processing. The results indicate that EC via pairings or instructions can change the affective responses towards formerly neutral stimuli and introduce pupil size as a physiological measure in EC research. However, Experiment 2 suggests that there might be moderating factors based on the type of EC procedure involved.
Acknowledgement
We want to thank Melanie Wagner, Nadine Werian, and Mitja Dürring for their assistance in data collection.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 The data as well as additional information about the analyses (e.g. observed power) is available at https://osf.io/f7g59.