2022/09/21 by Tal Moran, Yahel Nudler, Yoav Bar-Anan · 79 citations
Neuroscience · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes #Automaticity #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Cognition #Cognitive psychology #Conditioning #Epistemology #Everyday life #Neuroscience #Notice #Psychology #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Social psychology #Stimulus (psychology)
paper · pdf · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-032420-031815
published in Annual Review of Psychology 74(1), 245-269 (Annual Reviews)
openalex publication_date 2022/09/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Evaluative conditioning (EC) research investigates changes in the evaluation of a stimulus after co-occurrence with an affective stimulus. To explain the motivation behind this research, this review begins with an overview of the history of EC research, followed by a summary of the state of the art with respect to three key questions. First, how should EC procedures be used to influence evaluation? We provide a guide based on evidence concerning the functional properties of EC effects. Second, how does the EC effect occur? We discuss the possible mediating cognitive processes and their automaticity. Third, are EC effects ubiquitous outside the lab? We discuss the evidence for the external validity of EC research. We conclude that the most important open questions pertain to the relevance of EC to everyday life and to the level of control that characterizes the processes that mediate the EC effect after people notice the stimulus co-occurrence.