Associative and Propositional Processes in Human Evaluative Conditioning

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An essential task for any human being is to learn which objects in the environment are positive and which ones are negative. This idea resonates with the notion that all human beings tend to seek pleasure and try to avoid pain. One of the most important ways to acquire positive and negative responses to objects is evaluative conditioning, which involves the change in the evaluation of a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to its pairing with a positive or negative unconditioned stimulus (US). Evaluative conditioning effects are typically explained by the automatic formation of associative links in memory. More recently, however, associative theories have been challenged by propositional theories which attribute changes in the evaluation of a CS to the non-automatic acquisition and validation of propositional knowledge about CS-US relations in the environment. The main goal of the current project is to advance the idea that associative and propositional processes are not mutually exclusive, but instead contribute simultaneously to evaluative conditioning effects. Specifically, it is argued that the two learning mechanisms can independently influence the mental representation of an object, and thereby evaluative responses to that object. The findings of this project will have important implications for the scientific understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying the acquisition of positive and negative responses to objects in the environment. In addition, the expected findings will have important socio-economic implications due to their relevance for a wide range of questions related to the acquisition and change of evaluative responses.