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Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research 3/2012

01-05-2012 | Original Article

Evaluative conditioning may occur with and without contingency awareness

Auteurs: Robert Balas, Joanna Sweklej

Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research | Uitgave 3/2012

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Abstract

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is considered to play an important role in the attitude formation. One of the ongoing debates in this field concerns the impact of contingency awareness (i.e., awareness of the contingent relationship between conditioned and unconditioned stimulus, CS–US) on the EC occurrence. Despite the claims that EC does not require awareness of CS–US contingencies, the recent studies have claimed just the opposite. However, a number of methodological issues can be raised to undermine those claims. In two experiments, we tried to eliminate potential faults and sought to learn whether EC occurs with or without contingency awareness of either US identity or US valence. We report significant EC effects both with and without contingency awareness. These results provide support for the claim that the EC effects might be produced by independent mechanisms linked to awareness. We also argue that those mechanisms are differently captured by available measures of EC.
Voetnoten
1
The CSs are of course not ‘aware’ or ‘unaware’ of anything. We will use ‘aware’ or ‘unaware’ CSs to indicate whether participants were (or were not) able to recognize specific US paired with given CSs.
 
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Metagegevens
Titel
Evaluative conditioning may occur with and without contingency awareness
Auteurs
Robert Balas
Joanna Sweklej
Publicatiedatum
01-05-2012
Uitgeverij
Springer-Verlag
Gepubliceerd in
Psychological Research / Uitgave 3/2012
Print ISSN: 0340-0727
Elektronisch ISSN: 1430-2772
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-011-0336-5

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