Can (Instructions About) Stimulus Pairings Influence Automatic and Self-Reported Evaluations in the Presence of More Diagnostic Evaluative Information?
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online August, 2021
Can (Instructions About) Stimulus Pairings Influence Automatic and Self-Reported Evaluations in the Presence of More Diagnostic Evaluative Information?
Evaluative conditioning (EC) and persuasion are important pathways for shaping evaluations. However, little is known about how these pathways interact. Two preregistered experiments (total N = 1,510) examined effects of EC procedures (i.e., stimulus pairings) and EC instructions (i.e., instructions about stimulus pairings) on automatic and self-reported evaluations of social groups in the presence of more diagnostic information about the evaluative traits of those groups. Interestingly, both EC procedures and EC instructions still influenced automatic and self-reported evaluations when participants had read more diagnostic persuasive information. In line with predictions of propositional accounts of evaluation, EC instruction effects on automatic evaluations were not mediated by corresponding changes in self-reported evaluations. These results have theoretical implications and also highlight the important role that (instructions about) stimulus pairings have in social learning.
AllportG. W. (1935). Attitudes. In MurchisonC. (Ed.), A handbook of social psychology (pp. 798–844). Clark University Press.
3.
BegganJ. K. (1992). On the social nature of nonsocial perception: The mere ownership effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(2), 229–237.
4.
BergerI. E.MitchellA. A. (1989). The effect of advertising on attitude accessibility, attitude confidence, and the attitude-behavior relationship. Journal of Consumer Research, 16(3), 269–279.
5.
BriñolP.PettyR. E.McCaslinM. J. (2009). Changing attitudes on implicit versus explicit measures: What is the difference? In PettyR. E.FazioR. H.BriñolP. (Eds.), Attitudes: Insights from the new implicit measures (pp. 285–326). Psychology Press.
6.
ConeJ.FergusonM. J. (2015). He did what? The role of diagnosticity in revising implicit evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(1), 37–57.
7.
De HouwerJ. (2006). Using the Implicit Association Test does not rule out an impact of conscious propositional knowledge on evaluative conditioning. Learning and Motivation, 37(2), 176–187.
8.
De HouwerJ. (2014). A propositional model of implicit evaluation. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 8, 342–353.
9.
De HouwerJ. (2018). Propositional models of evaluative conditioning. Social Psychological Bulletin, 13(3), Article e28046.
10.
De HouwerJ.GawronskiB.Barnes-HolmesD. (2013). A functional-cognitive framework for attitude research. European Review of Social Psychology, 24, 252–287.
11.
De HouwerJ.HughesS. (2016). Evaluative conditioning as a symbolic phenomenon: On the relation between evaluative conditioning, evaluative conditioning via instructions, and persuasion. Social Cognition, 34(5), 480–494.
12.
De HouwerJ.ThomasS.BaeyensF. (2001). Association learning of likes and dislikes: A review of 25 years of research on human evaluative conditioning. Psychological Bulletin, 127(6), 853–869.
13.
De HouwerJ.Van DesselP.MoranT. (2020). Attitudes beyond associations: On the role of propositional representations in stimulus evaluation. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 61, 127–183.
14.
FazioR. H.JacksonJ. R.DuntonB. C.WilliamsC. J. (1995). Variability in automatic activation as an unobtrusive measure of racial attitudes: A bona fide pipeline?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(6), 1013–1027.
15.
FiskeS. T. (1998). Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. In GilbertD. T.FiskeS. T.LindzeyG. (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (4th ed., Vol. 2, pp. 357–411). McGraw-Hill.
16.
GastA.De HouwerJ. (2013). The influence of extinction and counterconditioning instructions on evaluative conditioning effects. Learning and Motivation, 44, 312–325.
17.
GawronskiB.BodenhausenG. V. (2006). Associative and propositional processes in evaluation: An integrative review of implicit and explicit attitude change. Psychological Bulletin, 132(5), 692–731.
18.
GawronskiB.BodenhausenG. V. (2011). The associative-propositional evaluation model: Theory, evidence, and open questions. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 59–127.
19.
GawronskiB.GaldiS.ArcuriL. (2015a). What can political psychology learn from implicit measures? Empirical evidence and new directions. Political Psychology, 36(1), 1–17.
20.
GawronskiB.GastA.De HouwerJ. (2015b). Is evaluative conditioning really resistant to extinction? Evidence for changes in evaluative judgements without changes in evaluative representations. Cognition and Emotion, 29(5), 816–830.
21.
GibsonB. (2008). Can evaluative conditioning change attitudes toward mature brands? New evidence from the Implicit Association Test. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(1), 178–188.
22.
GreenwaldA. G.McGheeD. E.SchwartzJ. K. L. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The Implicit Association Test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(6), 1464–1480.
23.
GreenwaldA. G.NosekB. A.BanajiM. R. (2003). Understanding and using the implicit association test: I. An improved scoring algorithm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 197–216.
24.
HeblM. R.MannixL. M. (2003). The weight of obesity in evaluating others: A mere proximity effect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(1), 28–38.
25.
HeyckeT.GehrmannS.HaafJ. M.StahlC. (2018). Of two minds or one? A registered replication of Rydell et al.(2006). Cognition and Emotion, 32(8), 1708–1727.
26.
HofmannW.De HouwerJ.PeruginiM.BaeyensF.CrombezG. (2010). Evaluative conditioning in humans: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 136(3), 390–421.
27.
HoubenK.SchoenmakersT. M.WiersR. W. (2010). I didn’t feel like drinking but I don’t know why: The effects of evaluative conditioning on alcohol-related attitudes, craving and behavior. Addictive Behaviors, 35(12), 1161–1163.
28.
KurdiB.BanajiM. R. (2017). Repeated evaluative pairings and evaluative statements: How effectively do they shift implicit attitudes?Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146, 194–213.
29.
LangP. J.BradleyM. M.CuthbertB. N. (2008). International affective picture system (IAPS): Technical manual and affective ratings. The Center for Research in Psychophysiology, University of Florida.
30.
MannT. C.KurdiB.BanajiM. R. (2020). How effectively can implicit evaluations be updated? Using evaluative statements after aversive repeated evaluative pairings. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(6), 1169–1192
31.
NosekB. A. (2005). Moderators of the relationship between implicit and explicit evaluation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134(4), 565–584.
32.
NosekB. A.GreenwaldA. G.BanajiM. R. (2005). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: II. Method variables and construct validity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(2), 166–180.
33.
OlsonM. A.FazioR. H. (2006). Reducing automatically activated racial prejudice through implicit evaluative conditioning. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(4), 421–433.
34.
PayneB. K.ChengC. M.GovorunO.StewartB. D. (2005). An inkblot for attitudes: Affect misattribution as implicit measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(3), 277–293.
35.
PettyR. E.CacioppoJ. T. (1984). The effects of involvement on responses to argument quantity and quality: Central and peripheral routes to persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(1), 69–81.
36.
RosseelY. (2012). LAVAAN: An R package for structural equation modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48(2), 1–36.
37.
RydellR. J.McConnellA. R. (2006). Understanding implicit and explicit attitude change: A systems of reasoning analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(6), 995–1008.
38.
RydellR. J.McConnellA. R.MackieD. M.StrainL. M. (2006). Of two minds: Forming and changing valence-inconsistent implicit and explicit attitudes. Psychological Science, 17(11), 954–958.
39.
SchienleA.StarkR.VaitlD. (2001). Evaluative conditioning: A possible explanation for the acquisition of disgust responses?Learning and Motivation, 32(1), 65–83.
SmithC. T.CalanchiniJ.HughesS.Van DesselP.De HouwerJ. (2020). The impact of instruction- and experience-based evaluative learning on IAT performance: A Quad model perspective. Cognition and Emotion, 34, 21–41.
42.
SmithE. R.DeCosterJ. (2000). Dual-process models in social and cognitive psychology: Conceptual integration and links to underlying memory systems. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4, 108–131.
43.
SpencerS. J.ZannaM. P.FongG. T. (2005). Establishing a causal chain: Why experiments are often more effective than mediational analyses in examining psychological processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 845–851.
44.
Van DesselP.ConeJ.GastA.De HouwerJ. (2020a). The impact of valenced verbal information on implicit and explicit evaluation: The role of information diagnosticity, primacy, and memory cueing. Cognition and Emotion, 34(1), 74–85.
45.
Van DesselP.De HouwerJ.GastA.RoetsA.SmithC. T. (2020b). On the effectiveness of approach-avoidance instructions and training for changing evaluations of social groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(2), e1–e14.
46.
Van DesselP.De HouwerJ.GastA.SmithC. T.De SchryverM. (2016). Instructing implicit processes: When instructions to approach or avoid influence implicit but not explicit evaluation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 63, 1–9.
47.
Van DesselP.GawronskiB.SmithC. T.De HouwerJ. (2017). Mechanisms underlying approach-avoidance instruction effects on implicit evaluation: Results of a preregistered adversarial collaboration. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 69, 23–32.
48.
Van DesselP.HughesS.De HouwerJ. (2019). How do actions influence attitudes? An inferential account of the impact of action performance on stimulus evaluation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 23(3), 267–284.
49.
WhitfieldM.JordanC. H. (2009). Mutual Influence of implicit and explicit attitudes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 748–759.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
