Dissociating preferences from evaluations following subliminal conditioning

Amd, Micah and Passarelli, Denise (2020) Dissociating preferences from evaluations following subliminal conditioning. Acta Psychologica, 204 . pp. 1-10. ISSN 0001-6918

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Abstract

Preferences towards unfamiliar drink brands may be influenced through subliminal conditioning. This can involve associating unfamiliar brands (CS) with positively valenced attributes (US) under constrained visual conditions to prevent the former's conscious detection. According to learning theory, CS associated with positive US should become increasingly preferred as the latter's positive valences generalizes (transfer) across associated CS. Similarly, correlating CS with negative US should reduce CS-associated preferences. There is some evidence that CS-associated preferences can be reliably influenced through subliminal conditioning (Elgendi et al., 2018). Conversely, there is also evidence that subliminal conditioning does not effectively alter evaluations of CS valence (Heycke et al., 2018). Those works suggest CS preferences may be more susceptible to subliminal valence transfer relative to CS evaluations. We explored this hypothesis presently, where four pairs of supraliminal/visible and subliminal trigrams (CS) were respectively associated with four US categories varied along aggregate valence (100% positive, 80% positive, 20% positive, 0% positive). CS evaluations and preferences were recorded before and after conditioning. Bayesian analyses revealed US valence manipulations were likely to shift preferences, but not evaluations, of subliminal CS. Across supraliminal CS, Bayesian and frequentist analyses indicated US valence was significant and likely to shift preferences and evaluations. The present study demonstrates preferences may be influenced through subliminal conditioning even as evaluations are not.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology Q Science > Q Science (General)
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts, Law and Education (FALE) > School of Social Sciences
Depositing User:	Micah Ahmad
Date Deposited:	19 Feb 2020 00:31
Last Modified:	19 Feb 2020 00:31
URI:	https://repository.usp.ac.fj/id/eprint/11970

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