Universität zu Köln

Högden, Fabia (2019). How do we learn to like and dislike? Awareness, propositional knowledge and generalization in evaluative conditioning. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.

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Abstract

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is concerned with the learning of likes and dislikes. In EC, neutral stimuli acquire evaluative characteristics through pairings with positive and negative stimuli. EC might be (partly) mediated by a primitive mental process that operates outside of our awareness and control. This process is often characterized as creating simple associations between mental representations of stimuli and is, therefore, often referred to as an associative process. Associative processes are, among other characteristics, often assumed to operate without awareness and assumed to not capture specific relations between stimuli. My thesis tests whether an associative process contributes to EC in three lines of research. In a first line of research, four experiments showed that awareness of the learning stimuli is necessary to obtain EC. A second line with four experiments showed that attribute conditioning, an effect similar to EC, is sensitive to specific relations between learning stimuli. Both findings are at odds with simple associations underlying the effect. Third, five experiments studied the generalization of EC. This line of research showed that whether acquired rules influence judgments of novel stimuli can depend on characteristics of the judgment task. An important implication from this is that neglect of propositional information does not necessarily indicate the working of associative processes. In sum, my research does not provide evidence for the contribution of an associative process to EC. Instead, I explain my findings in terms of a propositional or memory process and relate this explanation to contemporary single-process models of EC.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD thesis)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Högden, Fabia fabia.hoegden@uni-koeln.de UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-103597
Date:	2019
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Human Sciences
Divisions:	Faculty of Human Sciences > Department Psychologie
Subjects:	Psychology
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language Evaluatives Lernen German Evaluative Learning English Evaluative Conditioning English Attitudes English Einstellungserwerb German
Date of oral exam:	30 October 2019
Referee:	Name Academic Title Unkelbach, Christian Prof. Dr. Stahl, Christoph Prof. Dr.
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/10359