Is Stopping Something Pleasant Positive Or Negative? Dissociating The Effects Of Implications And Pairings In A Relational Evaluative Conditioning Paradigm

Recent research into evaluative conditioning (EC) shows that information about the relationship between the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli can exert strong effects on the size and direction of EC effect. This finding has been interpreted as support for dual-process models that assume two independent types of EC effects. However, previous research devoted to this question relied on aggregated evaluative measures. These approaches allow for alternative interpretations that challenge dual-process accounts. In three experiments, we developed and validated a multinomial processing tree model that distinguishes an EC effect of the pairings from EC effects of the implications. Our findings suggest that two independent processes contribute to evaluative change in a relational EC paradigm. The model that we developed offers a helpful method for future research in that it allows for an assessment of the effects of manipulations on processes rather than performance on an evaluative measure.