Can the Formation of Conditioned Attitudes Be Intentionally Controlled?

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). Counter to views that EC is the product of automatic learning processes, recent research has revealed various characteristics of nonautomatic processing in EC. The current research investigated whether the formation of conditioned attitudes can be intentionally controlled. Whereas EC effects on self-reported evaluations were reduced (enhanced) when participants were instructed to prevent (promote) the influence of CS-US pairings, EC effects on an evaluative priming measure remained unaffected by control instructions. Moreover, although EC effects on self-reported evaluations varied as a function of evaluative priming effects and recollective memory for CS-US pairings, motivation to control the influence of CS-US pairings qualified only the predictive relation of recollective memory. The results highlight functionally distinct contributions of uncontrollable encoding-related processes and controllable expression-related processes to EC effects.