Recent studies have provided contradictory results on whether the pairing of appetitive stimuli with no-go responses in go/no-go tasks leads to a devaluation of these stimuli. The authors of the present studies argue that devaluation effects after pairings of appetitive stimuli (e.g., unhealthy snacks or fruit) with no-go responses are usually short-lived but can become persistent if the stimuli form a meaningful category of appetitive stimuli that one should usually avoid (e.g., unhealthy snacks). In three studies, the authors found no persistent devaluation effects for appetitive stimuli that were paired with no-go responses when the pairings conveyed no meaning beyond the completion of the go/no-go task (e.g., pairing of no-go responses with fruit or pairing of no-go responses with a mixture of healthy and unhealthy stimuli). However, persistent devaluation effects after a delay of 10 min were found when no-go responses were consistently paired with unhealthy snacks contrasted against fruit.

Children are important targets of advertising campaigns from companies. However, children have been found to be particularly vulnerable to negative effects of advertising, and protecting children from these effects is an important task of consumer policy. Two important aspects have to be considered in this task. First, advertising affects judgments and behaviour not only during ad exposure, but also in delayed consumption and purchase contexts. Second, advertising thrives largely at an implicit level-during ad exposure as well as in consumption decisions. The current article introduces a dual-step (ad exposure vs. purchase/consumption) and dual-process (implicit vs. explicit) model of advertising effects on children. The model is based on a review of implicit advertising effects and implicit mechanisms of self-control. It implies that consumer policies intending to prevent undesired advertising effects should support interventions with the goal of strengthening advertising and purchasing literacy and, in addition, implicit self-control mechanisms in children. As self-control in consumption decisions is largely relevant for, and learned during, shopping and consumption, such interventions should focus on educating parents or other primary caregivers, because they are the most likely persons to accompany children in such situations and have a great influence on children's implicit learning.

The present study proposes arousal as an important mechanism driving buying impulsiveness. We examined the effect of buying impulsiveness on arousal in non-shopping and shopping contexts. In an eye-tracking experiment, we measured pupil dilation while participants viewed and rated pictures of shopping scenes and non-shopping scenes. The results demonstrated that buying impulsiveness is closely associated with arousal as response to viewing pictures of shopping scenes. This pertained for hedonic shopping situations as well as for utilitarian shopping situations. Importantly, the effect did not emerge for non-shopping scenes. Furthermore, we demonstrated that arousal of impulsive buyers is independent from cognitive evaluation of scenes in the pictures.

Using implementation intentions in shopping situations: How arousal can help shield consumers against temptations.

BackgroundThe initial preference task (IPT) is an implicit measure that has featured prominently in the literature and enjoys high popularity because it offers to provide an unobtrusive and objective assessment of self-esteem that is easy to administer. However, its use for self-esteem assessment may be limited because of weak associations with direct personality measures. Moreover, moderator effects of sample- and study-related variables need investigation to determine the value of IPT-based assessments of self-esteem.MethodsConventional and grey-literature database searches, as well as screening of reference lists of obtained articles, yielded a total of 105 independent healthy adult samples (N = 17,777) originating from 60 studies. Summary effect estimates and subgroup analyses for potential effect moderators (e.g., administration order, algorithm, rating type) were calculated by means of meta-analytic random- and mixed-effects models. Moreover, we accounted for potential influences of publication year, publication status (published vs. not), and participant sex in a weighted stepwise hierarchical multiple meta-regression. We tested for dissemination bias through six methods.ResultsThere was no noteworthy correlation between IPT-based implicit and explicit self-esteem (r = .102), indicating conceptual independence of these two constructs. Effects were stronger when the B-algorithm was used for calculation of IPT-scores and the IPT was administered only once, whilst all other moderators did not show significant influences. Regression analyses revealed a somewhat stronger (albeit non-significant) effect for men. Moreover, there was no evidence for dissemination bias or a decline effect, although effects from published studies were numerically somewhat stronger than unpublished effects.DiscussionWe show that there is no noteworthy association between IPT-based implicit and explicit self-esteem, which is broadly consistent with dual-process models of implicit and explicit evaluations on the one hand, but also casts doubt on the suitability of the IPT for the assessment of implicit self-esteem on the other hand.