The Role of the Ecology in Evaluative Conditioning: Towards a Comprehensive Conceptualization of Preparedness

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Mandy Hütter
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: from 2015 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 268224874

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

Evaluative conditioning (EC) procedures typically pair neutral, conditioned stimuli (CSs) with valent, unconditioned stimuli (USs). As a result of this pairing, the evaluation of the CS typically changes in the direction of the valence of the US. The traditional view on evaluative conditioning is that it is a phenomenon that is largely stimulus-driven. While this view has been softened by more recent theoretical developments, a systematic investigation of characteristics of the context in which a pairing takes place was lacking. Specifically, the present project acknowledged that the learner enriches the pairing with self-generated information. ‘Preparedness’ was used as an umbrella term that denotes effects of features of the stimuli, the learner, and the learning environment on interpretations of stimulus pairs. We documented numerous of such influences on the size and sign of EC effects, features of automaticity and the generalization of attitudes. For instance, while we have shown that attention to the CS-US pairings is a prerequisite of EC effects, this does not seem to imply that people form only explicit memories of the pairings or that they can always control the effect of the pairings on their attitudes. As another example, we showed that sampling CS-US pairings alters the effects that the pairings have in passive versions of the paradigm. Overall, we conclude that there is a substantive contribution of microgenetic, constructivist processes that moderate the effects that CS-US pairings can have on evaluations, and in some cases, the processes by which these effects are mediated. We now understand better the interaction between the individual, stimulus pairings, and the learning environment in the acquisition of attitudes. Our work has thereby contributed to several important debates in psychology revolving around the definition and measurement of automaticity and the interpretation of empirical evidence as supporting dual- vs. single process theories of evaluative learning. It has also been informative on practical applications of EC as well as on debates revolving around the protection of consumers from unwanted influences of EC-like procedures such as advertising based on valent imagery.

Publications

• The Symmetric Nature of Evaluative Memory Associations. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(1), 61-68.
  Kim, Jeehye Christine; Sweldens, Steven & Hütter, Mandy
  
• Applying processing trees in social psychology. European Review of Social Psychology, 27(1), 116-159.
  Hütter, Mandy & Klauer, Karl Christoph
  
• Editorial: Conceptual, Theoretical, and Methodological Challenges in Evaluative Conditioning Research. Social Cognition, 34(5), 343-356.
  Hütter, Mandy & Fiedler, Klaus
  
• Editorial: Conceptual, Theoretical, and Methodological Challenges in Evaluative Conditioning Research. Social Cognition, 34(5), 343-356.
  Hütter, Mandy & Fiedler, Klaus
  
• Examining the contributions of memory-dependent and memory-independent components to evaluative conditioning via instructions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 71, 49-58.
  Hütter, Mandy & De Houwer, Jan
  
• How to Study Consciousness in Consumer Research, A Commentary on Williams and Poehlman. Journal of Consumer Research, 44(2), 266-275.
  Sweldens, Steven; Tuk, Mirjam A & Hütter, Mandy
  
• Is Evaluative Conditioning Moderated by Big Five Personality Traits?. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(1), 94-102.
  Vogel, Tobias; Hütter, Mandy & Gebauer, Jochen E.
  
• Resource Availability and Explicit Memory Largely Determine Evaluative Conditioning Effects in a Paradigm Claimed to be Conducive to Implicit Attitude Acquisition. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(7), 758-767.
  Mierop, Adrien; Hütter, Mandy & Corneille, Olivier
  
• Dissociating Controllable and Uncontrollable Effects of Affective Stimuli on Attitudes and Consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 45(2), 320-349.
  Hütter, Mandy & Sweldens, Steven
  
• Does attitude acquisition in evaluative conditioning without explicit CS-US memory reflect implicit misattribution of affect?. Cognition and Emotion, 33(2), 173-184.
  Mierop, Adrien; Hütter, Mandy; Stahl, Christoph & Corneille, Olivier
  
• Does evaluative conditioning depend on awareness? Evidence from a continuous flash suppression paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 44(10), 1641-1657.
  Högden, Fabia; Hütter, Mandy & Unkelbach, Christian
  
• Are there two independent evaluative conditioning effects in relational paradigms? Dissociating the effects of CS-US pairings and their meaning. Cognition and Emotion, 34(1), 170-187.
  Kukken, Niels; Hütter, Mandy & Holland, Rob W.
  
• Evidence suggestive of uncontrollable attitude acquisition replicates in an instructions-based evaluative conditioning paradigm: Implications for associative attitude acquisition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 85, 103841.
  Corneille, Olivier; Mierop, Adrien; Stahl, Christoph & Hütter, Mandy
  
• Investigating attitudinal ambivalence via sequential priming: Evidence for the simultaneous and unintentional activation of opposite evaluations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(7), 1269-1297.
  Berger, Katharina T.; Hütter, Mandy & Corneille, Olivier
  
• Automatic processes in evaluative learning. Cognition and Emotion, 34(1), 1-20.
  Hütter, Mandy & Rothermund, Klaus
  
• Automaticity in Evaluative Learning [Special Issue]. Cognition and Emotion, 34(1), 1-187
  Hütter, M. & Rothermund, K.
  
• Implicit? What Do You Mean? A Comprehensive Review of the Delusive Implicitness Construct in Attitude Research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 24(3), 212-232.
  Corneille, Olivier & Hütter, Mandy
  
• Incidental Attitude Formation via the Surveillance Task: A Preregistered Replication of the Olson and Fazio (2001) Study. Psychological Science, 32(1), 120-131.
  Moran, Tal; Hughes, Sean; Hussey, Ian; Vadillo, Miguel A.; Olson, Michael A.; Aust, Frederik; Bading, Karoline; Balas, Robert; Benedict, Taylor; Corneille, Olivier; Douglas, Samantha B.; Ferguson, Melissa J.; Fritzlen, Katherine A.; Gast, Anne; Gawronski, Bertram; Giménez-Fernández, Tamara; Hanusz, Krzysztof; Heycke, Tobias; Högden, Fabia ... & De Houwer, Jan
  
• What is learned in approach-avoidance tasks? On the scope and generalizability of approach-avoidance effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(8), 1460-1476.
  Hütter, Mandy & Genschow, Oliver
  
• Learning of affective meaning: revealing effects of stimulus pairing and stimulus exposure. Cognition and Emotion, 35(8), 1588-1606.
  Richter, Bruno & Hütter, Mandy
  
• An integrative review of dual- and single-process accounts of evaluative conditioning. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1(11), 640-653.
  Hütter, Mandy
  
• Bridging the gap between autonomous and predetermined paradigms: The role of sampling in evaluative learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151(8), 1972-1998.
  Hütter, Mandy; Niese, Zachary Adolph & Ihmels, Max
  
• It’s good and it’s bad: Sampling processes can generate decision-framing effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151(11), 2771-2787.
  Niese, Zachary Adolph & Hütter, Mandy
  
• Sampling as Preparedness in Evaluative Learning. Sampling in Judgment and Decision Making, 131-152.
  Hütter, Mandy & Niese, Zachary Adolph
  
• The malleability of sampling's impact on evaluation: Sampling goals moderate the evaluative impact of sampling a stimulus. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 109, 104516.
  Niese, Zachary Adolph & Hütter, Mandy
  
• Choosing What You Like or Liking What You Chose? Sampling’s Impact on Evaluation and the Role of Idiosyncratic Reactions to Valent Stimuli. Social Psychological and Personality Science.
  Niese, Zachary Adolph & Hütter, Mandy