Overcoming Correlational Pitfalls: Experimental Evidence Suggests That Evaluative Conditioning Occurs for Explicit But Not Implicit Encoding of CS–US Pairings

Abstract

Do people need to explicitly encode conditioned stimuli–unconditioned stimuli (CS–US) pairings for evaluative conditioning (EC) effects to emerge? Despite the large number of studies that addressed this issue, no simple answer has emerged yet. In part, this is due to the relative lack of experimental evidence for the role of awareness of the CS–US contingency at encoding in EC. In the present experiment, participants’ encoding of the CS–US pairings was experimentally manipulated by relying on foveal and parafoveal presentations of the CSs. More specifically, spatial locations (i.e., foveal vs. parafoveal) of the CSs and US valence (i.e., positive vs. negative) were manipulated within participants, and CS–US pairings were counterbalanced across participants. Results reveal explicit encoding of the CSs and EC effects for the foveal CS presentations only. We discuss the implications of these experimental findings for the associative and propositional approach to EC.