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09:00 - 10:30
Parallel sessions 7
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09:00 - 10:30
Room: HSZ - N2
Chair/s:
Claudine Pulm, Florian Weber
Evaluative Conditioning (EC) refers to changes in attitude towards a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to its pairing with a positive or negative unconditioned stimulus (US). In this symposium, we discuss various context-related and cognitive factors that may influence EC effects and shape the resulting conditioned attitudes. The first talk will explore whether letting participants rate a CS both before and after conditioning - rather than only afterward - impacts EC effects. The second talk centers around valence asymmetries resulting from differences in the frequency of positive and negative USs during EC. Whereas prior research has focused on valence asymmetries for individual stimuli, this talk extends the analysis to groups, demonstrating that rare group members can disproportionately affect overall group evaluations. Focusing on instances of EC with multiple, simultaneously appearing USs, the third talk presents evidence that adding weakly positive (negative) USs to a highly positive (negative) US diminishes EC effects. The fourth talk investigates the role of language for the conditioning process, testing whether a native vs. a secondary language context during EC leads to different outcomes. The last talk examines autonomous sampling during EC, asking whether merely instructing participants to sample certain stimuli more frequently is sufficient to achieve the effect that autonomous sampling has on conditioned attitudes. In summary, these talks offer valuable insights into how contextual and cognitive processes shape EC effects, enhancing our understanding of EC and highlighting promising directions for future research.
Submission 415
Greater Control over Evaluative Conditioning Effects in One’S Native Language
SymposiumTalk-04
Presented by: Serena D'Hooge
Serena D'Hooge 1, Marina Lenkovskaya 2, Steven Sweldens 2
1 EDHEC Business School, France
2 Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Netherlands
This study investigates how language context (native vs. secondary) affects controlled and uncontrolled Evaluative Conditioning (EC) processes, highlighting differences in the controllability of evaluative influences. Given English’s global dominance in advertising, understanding these mechanisms in non-native speakers is crucial for explaining their susceptibility to emotionally charged marketing influences.

A process dissociation procedure (Hütter & Sweldens, 2018) was used to disentangle controlled and uncontrolled evaluative influences. Participants (native Dutch speakers; N = 230, Mage = 19) evaluated abstract logos paired with pretested positive or negative words presented either in their native or secondary language (between subjects). They were instructed to align or reverse their evaluations in two within-subject phases (standard and reversal). A multinomial processing tree (MPT) model estimated three parameters: controlled effects (c), reflecting evaluations consistent with the instructions; uncontrolled effects (u), reflecting assimilative evaluations consistent with paired valence regardless of instructions; and general response biases (r), reflecting a uniform tendency toward all logos, independent of valence or instructions.

Model results showed good overall fit (G²(2) = 0.18, p = .913). The c-parameter was significantly higher in Dutch (c = .68) than in English (c = .57), ΔG²(1) = 27.24, p < .001. No differences emerged for the u-parameter (0.41-0.43), ΔG²(1) = 0.21, p = .645, or the r-parameter, (0.51-0.52), ΔG²(1) = 0.01, p = .904.

These findings suggest better control over EC influences in ones native language, while uncontrolled influences occur equally across languages. Language thus emerges as a key factor in the controllability of EC effects.