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Published on: October 6, 2011
Aware and (dis)liking: item-based analyses reveal that valence acquisition via evaluative conditioning emerges only
Gordy Pleyers1, Olivier Corneille, Olivier Luminet
1Research Unit for Emotion, Cognition, and Health, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. gordy.pleyers@psp.ucl.ac.be
Abstract:
Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to changes in the liking of an affectively neutral stimulus (the conditioned stimulus, or CS) following the pairing of that stimulus with another stimulus of affective value (the unconditioned stimulus, or US). In 3 experiments, the authors assessed contingency awareness, that is, awareness of the CS-US associations, by relying on participants' responses to individual items rather than using a global method of assessment. They found that EC emerged on contingency aware CSs only. Of note, whether the CSs were evaluated explicitly (Experiments 1 and 2) or implicitly (Experiment 3) did not make a difference. This pattern supports the idea that awareness of the CS-US associations may be required for valence acquisition via EC.
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