Make the manikin move: Symbolic approach–avoidance responses affect implicit and explicit face evaluations

Abstract

The present research aimed to replicate and extend findings of Huijding, Muris, Lester, Field, and Joosse (2011), investigating whether symbolic approach–avoidance responses can induce implicit and explicit evaluation biases. Faces with a neutral expression were shown on a computer screen, and participants were instructed to repeatedly move a manikin towards some faces (approach) and away from other faces (avoidance). An affective priming task and a face rating task were used to assess training-compatible differences in implicit and explicit face evaluations, respectively. Results showed that the manikin training was successful: The priming task revealed more positive implicit evaluations of approached than avoided faces, and approached faces were rated more positively than avoided ones in the face rating task. These findings replicate those of Huijding and colleagues by demonstrating training effects on explicit evaluations, and they extend them by demonstrating effects on implicit evaluations.

Keywords:

• Approach–avoidance training
• Implicit and explicit face evaluations
• Manikin task

Notes

¹ Following the face rating, we administered 2 tasks to assess participants’ contingency awareness. For each face that appeared in the training, we asked whether it was shown in brown or in blue, and whether it was approached or avoided by the manikin. We did not include the analysis of these data here because, during the manipulation check of the training task, each picture appeared once in the trained and once in the untrained direction. Therefore, there was no 100% contingency during the training task, implying that the contingency awareness data could not be interpreted adequately. However, we are more than happy to provide these results, so an overview of these data can be received via the first author.

² When analysing the data including the participants we removed from the analysis the result pattern remained unchanged. The same is true regarding the analyses of the affective priming and face rating task, respectively.