Experimental Evidence That Demand Characteristics Do Not Play a Dominant Role in the Evaluative Conditioning Effect

The evaluative conditioning (EC) effect has been documented in many experiments: Participants typically prefer stimuli that co-occurred with positive stimuli over stimuli that co-occurred with negative stimuli. The present research attempted to test whether demand characteristics are a dominant caus...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social psychological & personality science 2024-09, Vol.15 (7), p.759-768
Main Authors: Nudler, Yahel, Zvi, May, Levy, Gal, Bar-Anan, Yoav
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Comorbidity
Conditioning
Manipulation
Stimulus
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The evaluative conditioning (EC) effect has been documented in many experiments: Participants typically prefer stimuli that co-occurred with positive stimuli over stimuli that co-occurred with negative stimuli. The present research attempted to test whether demand characteristics are a dominant cause of the EC effect. In three experiments, we informed participants of the research hypothesis, sometimes indicating an expectation of a contrast effect, rather than an assimilative effect. That manipulation hardly moderated the EC effect. The manipulation influenced participants’ beliefs regarding the research hypothesis, although participants generally believed that an assimilative effect is a more plausible research hypothesis than a contrast effect. Even participants who believed that the researchers expected a contrast effect or assumed that stimulus co-occurrence typically causes a contrast effect still showed an assimilative effect. The results suggest that although demand characteristics might influence the EC effect, the overall influence of that factor is minor.
ISSN:1948-5506
1948-5514
DOI:10.1177/19485506241252306