Effect of evaluative conditioning on affectively neutral nonsense shapes

Abstract

The present study examined the effect of evaluative conditioning on affectively neutral novel contour shapes. In the experiment, two nonsense shapes were paired with positive and negative personality traits, and were presented to participants (N= 26). These shapes and positive or negative nouns were then used as primes and targets for the affective priming procedure at stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) 300 and 1000. Results showed that, at both SOAs, positive target words presented immediately after the shape paired with positive traits and negative target words presented immediately after the shape paired with negative traits caused faster evaluation than the other combinations. These results suggest that both automatic evaluation and intentional expectation are linked with evaluative conditioning.