Social Psychological Bulletin
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Why Does Co-Occurrence Change Evaluation? Introduction to a Special Issue on Evaluative Conditioning
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The Task of Social Psychology Is to Explain Behavior not Just to Observe it
No full textDoliński (2018, this issue) deplores the decline of behavior observation in social psychology since the 1960’s and asks whether (social-) psychology is still a behavioral science. I question both, that there was a decline and that direct behavior observations are essential for a science of behavior. After all, behavior can also be inferred from outcomes and other traces of behavior. During the alleged heydays of behavioral observation, social psychology was threatened by a crisis partly precipitated by Wicker’s (1969) demonstration that verbal attitude measures were often unrelated to behavioral responses towards attitude objects. His critique was devastating, because social psychology at that time relied heavily on rating scales as dependent measure. The advance of the social cognition movement in the 1970’s was to provide social psychology with new techniques (e.g., priming, cognitive load, reaction time techniques) that eased the reliance on rating scales. At the same time, it became insufficient to merely show a relationship between an external event and a behavioral response and to rely on speculations about the internal processes that might have been responsible for this relationship. Instead, studies had to assess the cognitive and motivational processes assumed to link those external events, typically – but not always – using social cognition techniques. This required additional studies leading to a decline in the proportion of studies reporting behavioral observations. I illustrate this development with one of my own research programs and also suggest that in this example an outcome may be a more valid measure of behavior than behavioral observations
New perspectives for Social Psychological Bulletin (Psychologia Społeczna)
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What You Feel Is What You See: A Binding Perspective on Evaluative Conditioning
No full textIn this paper, we outline the predominant theoretical perspectives on evaluative conditioning (EC)—the changes in liking that are due to the pairing of stimuli—identify their weaknesses, and propose a new framework, the binding perspective on EC, which might help to overcome at least some of these issues. Based on feature integration theory (Treisman & Gelade, 1980, https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(80)90005-5) and the theory of event coding (TEC; Hommel, Müsseler, Aschersleben, & Prinz, 2001, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X01000103), we assume that EC depends on a selective integration mechanism that binds relevant CS, US, and action features into an event-file, while simultaneously inhibiting features irrelevant for current goals. This perspective examines hitherto unspecified processes relevant to the encoding of CS-US pairs and their consequences for behavior, which we hope will stimulate further theoretical development. We also present some preliminary evidence for binding in EC and discuss the scope and limitations of this perspective.
 
A Model of Attribute Conditioning
No full textWe present a model of attribute conditioning, the phenomenon that people’s assessment of stimuli’s specific attributes (e.g., a person’s characteristics) changes due to pairings with other stimuli possessing these specific attributes (e.g., another "athletic" person). These changes in attribute assessments go beyond evaluation changes due to these pairings (i.e., evaluative conditioning effects). We provide a short historical overview of the phenomenon and the available data. Then we present a potential mental model of the effect: We assume attribute conditioning to be a form of stimulus-stimulus learning. CS-US pairings establish an enduring referential link between CS and US. We present an associative as well as a distributed memory variant of this referential link. Based on this model, we provide the answers to the specific questions that guide the present special issue. Finally, we discuss the relation of evaluative and attribute conditioning
Evaluative Conditioning as Memory-Based Judgment
No full textThe article proposes a view of evaluative conditioning (EC) as resulting from judgments based on learning instances stored in memory. It is based on the formal episodic memory model MINERVA 2. Additional assumptions specify how the information retrieved from memory is used to inform specific evaluative dependent measures. The present approach goes beyond previous accounts in that it uses a well-specified formal model of episodic memory; it is however more limited in scope as it aims to explain EC phenomena that do not involve reasoning processes. The article illustrates how the memory-based-judgment view accounts for several empirical findings in the EC literature that are often discussed as evidence for dual-process models of attitude learning. It sketches novel predictions, discusses limitations of the present approach, and identifies challenges and opportunities for its future development.
 
Place Attachment and Collective Action Tendency
No full textThree studies were carried out to examine how place attachment and collective action tendency are related and what role self-expansion and social interactions play in this relationship. In the first study (N = 156) we found that a more active form of attachment – place discovered – is a significant predictor of tendency to engage in collective action in favor of one’s neighborhood. In the second study (N = 197), we focused on frequency of social interactions in one’s neighborhood as the antecedent of place attachment and collective action tendencies. We found that inhabitants who declared more frequent social interactions in one’s neighborhood, expressed stronger place discovered, and this attachment is related to collective action tendencies. In the third study (N = 153), we tested if self-expansion mediates this relationship. We found that stronger place discovered was related to the feeling of self-expansion that resulted from contact with neighbors. Moreover, self-expansion was related to the tendency to engage in collective action
Bad Methods Drive out Good: The Curse of Imagination in Social Psychology Research
No full textWe agree with Doliński (2018, this issue) that behavior is disappearing as an object of study of contemporary social psychology and it has been increasingly replaced by verbal declarations of imagined behaviors, which are analyzed as dependent variables. We read this as a case of a methodological version of Gresham’s law: “bad methods drive out good”. We notice a complementary trend on the side of manipulations of independent variables. Instead of manipulating real situations, researchers frequently instruct their participants to imagine these situations. In effect, social psychology drifts to studying imaginary behaviors in imagined situations and this poses a serious threat for the validity of our findings. We present one study comparing responses to imagined and actually experienced situations (concerning moral judgment and trust) and find that these two types of situation produce divergent responses. We conclude that imagined situations cannot be a source of knowledge about responses in situations that people really experience
The Effects of Stability of Uncontrollability Experiences on Cognitive Exhaustion
No full textThe present study investigates whether stability of the uncontrollability experience is an important factor in causing cognitive exhaustion syndrome. In the first phase, participants experienced different types of deprivation of personal control in terms of trying to find a solution to solvable and unsolvable tasks based on the procedure of Informational Helplessness Training. The Linear Orders Task was used to evaluate the efficiency of generative reasoning. The results revealed the greatest deficits in the group with random uncontrollability experience, with the first solvable and the last unsolvable task. Mechanisms underlying the effects of various uncontrollability experiences on cognitive exhaustion are discussed
Distinguishing Positive and Negative Self-Evaluations in Age Differences in Possible Selves
No full textParticipants in the present study (82 high school students and 60 seniors) used a version of the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) to describe their past (10 years ago), present, and future (10 years from the present) selves. From the TIPI we derived measures of positive and negative self-evaluation. We analyzed these data with 2 (young-old) x 3 (past, present, and future) ANOVAs. Consistent with previous research, for positive self-evaluations, we found that younger people thought they were better now than they had been in the past and would be better in the future than they were now, and older people thought that had been better in the past than they were now, and that they were better now than they would be in the future. In contrast, and inconsistent with previous research, for negative self-evaluations, we found few differences among ratings of the three selves. We provide a tentative explanation of these results based on possible differences in how positive and negative age related stereotypes are incorporated into self-evaluations. Previous research has not distinguished positive and negative self-evaluations when examining differences among possible selves, and we believe the present results suggest that this might be a fruitful area of inquiry