Effects of stimulus strength and attention on evaluative learning - Unconscious evaluative conditioning under subliminal and incidental conditions

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Christoph Stahl
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology ; General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: since 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 273859310

Can attitudes be learned unconsciously? In advertising, brand names are presented together with pleasant images or popular people; because of the pleasant experiences we associate with them, we later evaluate the brand names more positively. This evaluative conditioning effect describes an elementary form of attitude learning. The current project investigates the role of stimulus strength and attention in evaluative conditioning with the aim of testing the hypothesis of unconscious evaluative conditioning effects. Unconscious processing may occur, on the one hand, under subliminal presentation (i.e., minimal stimulus strength but high attention) of the stimuli to be conditioned. On the other hand, learning under incidential conditions (i.e., minimal attention and no goal to learn anything) is also described as unconscious. The preliminary evidence obtained in the past sections of the project argues against evaluative conditioning under subliminal stimulus presentation; in contrast, it can be robustly demonstrated under incidential learning conditions. However, several questions remain unanswered regarding both subliminal and incidential evaluative conditioning. One goal of the project is to further investigate a robustly replicable subliminal learning effect. In a new paradigm with subliminal presentation of the to-be-conditioned stimuli, a robust learning effect can be shown - but it is unclear to what extent it is actually attitudinal learning; and to what extent the processing is automatic (in the sense of being goalindependent). A second goal of the project is to investigate the processes and memory representations underlying the incidential evaluative conditioning effect. Here, it is unclear to what extent conscious memory retrieval is necessary for the learned attitude to have an effect on experience and behavior, or whether such an influence can also occur without the person being aware of the influence of conditioning on his or her judgments and decisions. This question is not only relevant to basic theories of learning and memory, but also central to the controllability of effects of advertising, and to attitude-behavior theories in social and consumer psychology.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants