Retrieval cues fail to influence contextualized evaluations

Abstract

Initial evaluations generalise to new contexts, whereas counter-attitudinal evaluations are context-specific. Counter-attitudinal information may not change evaluations in new contexts because perceivers fail to retrieve counter-attitudinal cue-evaluation associations from memory outside the counter-attitudinal learning context. The current work examines whether an additional, counter-attitudinal retrieval cue can enhance the generalizability of counter-attitudinal evaluations. In four experiments, participants learned positive information about a target person, Bob, in one context, and then learned negative information about Bob in a different context. While learning the negative information, participants wore a wristband as a retrieval cue for counter-attitudinal Bob-negative associations. Participants then made speeded as well as deliberate evaluations of Bob while wearing or not wearing the wristband. Internal meta-analysis failed to find a reliable effect of the counterattitudinal retrieval cue on speeded or deliberate evaluations, whereas the context cues influenced speeded and deliberate evaluations. Counter to predictions, counter-attitudinal retrieval cues did not disrupt the generalisation of first-learned evaluations or the context-specificity of second-learned evaluations (Experiments 2-4), but the counter-attitudinal retrieval cue did influence evaluations in the absence of context cues (Experiment 1). The current work provides initial evidence that additional counter-attitudinal retrieval cues fail to disrupt the renewal and generalizability of first-learned evaluations.

Automatic processes in evaluative learning

“…Manipulations that were used during acquisition regard the awareness of evaluative influences (Sava, Payne, Măgurean, Iancu, & Rusu, 2020 this issue), the aversive quality of the US (Benedict & Gast, 2020 this issue), the diagnosticity, primacy and sequential position of evaluative information (Van Dessel, Cone, Gast, & De Houwer, 2020 this issue;Hutchings et al, 2020 this issue), the experiential versus instructed character of evaluative information (Smith et al, 2020 this issue), the meaning of CS-US pairs based on relational qualifiers (Bading et al, 2020 (Högden et al, 2020 this issue).…”

“…On the assessment side, many studies used multinomial processing tree modelling to disentangle different components underlying the expression of evaluations (Kukken et al, 2020 this issue;Smith et al, 2020 this issue), and/or compared evaluative learning effects that were assessed with direct versus indirect measures (Bading et al, 2020 this issue;Gast et al, 2020 this issue;Van Dessel et al, 2020 this issue). Other papers compared evaluations with and without control options (Sava et al, 2020 this issue), speeded and unspeeded evaluations (Hutchings et al, 2020…”