title: Propositional Versus Dual-Process Accounts of Evaluative Conditioning: I. The Effects of Co-Occurrence and Relational Information on Implicit and Explicit Evaluations.
abstract: Evaluative conditioning (EC) is defined as the change in the evaluation of a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to its pairing with a valenced unconditioned stimulus (US). According to propositional accounts, EC effects should be qualified by the relation between the CS and the US. Dual-process accounts suggest that relational information should qualify EC effects on explicit evaluations, whereas implicit evaluations should reflect the frequency of CS-US co-occurrences. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that, when relational information was provided before the encoding of CS-US pairings, it moderated EC effects on explicit, but not implicit, evaluations. In Experiment 3, relational information moderated EC effects on both explicit and implicit evaluations when it was provided simultaneously with CS-US pairings. Frequency of CS-US pairings had no effect on implicit evaluations. Although the results can be reconciled with both propositional and dual-process accounts, they are more parsimoniously explained by propositional accounts.
authors.affiliation: 1 The University of Hong Kong.|2 University of Texas at Austin, USA.
authors.forename: Xiaoqing
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: 2 University of Texas at Austin, USA.
authors.forename: Bertram
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gawronski
authors.affiliation: 3 Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Balas
mesh_terms: D001290:Attitude; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011582:Psychological Theory
keywords: associative learning; attitudes; dual-process theories; evaluative conditioning; propositional theory