Sperlich, Lea ORCID: 0000-0001-5513-0230 (2024). A Dual-Force Perspective on Evaluative Conditioning. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.
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Dissertation_Lea Sperlich_Veroeffentlichung.pdf - Accepted Version Download (3MB) |
Abstract
People constantly attribute positive or negative qualities to objects in their environment. What the organism considers to be positive or negative depends on the context in which it currently finds itself. While objects may be perceived as positive in one context, they may appear negative in another context. The social environment in which we operate is generally more positive than negative. In many cases, this positive environment results in negative information having advantages over positive information (i.e., a so-called ‘negativity bias’). For example, negative information tends to be better remembered. Interestingly, there’s hardly any evidence for this otherwise well-documented advantage of negative information in experiments on Evaluative Conditioning (EC). EC is defined as the change in liking of a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to its pairing with a positive or negative unconditioned stimulus (US). One reason for the absence of a negativity bias in EC experiments might be their symmetric structure, which does not reflect the information ecology of the real world. Other similar structural differences could also explain why typical EC experiments consistently elicit EC effects in the laboratory, while EC rarely occurs in the real world. In this thesis, I investigate when EC effects occur, focusing on the interplay between environment and organism. Additionally, I examine whether the difference in the structure of the real world and EC experiments can explain the absence of a negativity bias in EC experiments. The findings show that, in addition to the environment, the organism plays a crucial role in perceiving CS and US pairings. Furthermore, the thesis provides evidence that a cognitive-ecological approach can contribute to explaining the absence of a negativity bias in EC.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD thesis) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-731587 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Date: | 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Language: | English | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faculty: | Faculty of Human Sciences | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Human Sciences > Department Psychologie | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Subjects: | Generalities, Science Psychology General statistics |
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Date of oral exam: | 4 June 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Funders: | DFG UN 273/5–2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Refereed: | Yes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
URI: | http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/73158 |
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