Affective Priming as an Indirect Measure of Food Preferences Acquired Through Odor Conditioning
Abstract
Abstract. The present study aimed at investigating affective priming for originally neutral food stimuli that recently acquired their affective meaning through odor conditioning. In a first phase, pictures of different brands of yoghurts (CSs) were contingently presented with a positive or negative odor (US). In a subsequent phase, the yoghurt CSs were used as primes in an affective priming procedure. Rating data showed that the acquisition procedure resulted in a reliable evaluative learning effect. This could be corroborated by the results of the priming task. Participants responded faster to positive target words and made fewer errors when they were preceded by a CS that had been associated with a positive odor, as compared to a CS that was associated with a negative odor. A reversed pattern was present for negative targets. Based on these findings, it is suggested that affective priming might be used as a demand-free measure of evaluative learning.
References
(1990). Flavor-flavor and color-flavor conditioning in humans. Learning and Motivation, 21, 434– 455
(1998). Affective and identity priming with episodically associated stimuli. Cognition and Emotion, 12, 145– 169
(2001). Associative learning of likes and dislikes: A review of 25 years of research on human evaluative conditioning. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 853– 869
in press Resistance to extinction of human evaluative conditioning using between-subjects design. Cognition and Emotion,
(2003). Implicit measures in social cognition research: Their meaning and use. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 297– 327
(2001). When all is considered: Evaluative learning does not require contingency awareness. Consciousness and Cognition, 10, 567– 573
(2000). Affective-evaluative learning in humans: A form of associative learning or only an artifact?. Learning and Motivation, 31, 345– 363
(2000). Affect. (Version 1.0) [Computer software; retrieved from www.psy.kuleuven.ac.be/leerpsy/affect]. University of Leuven, Belgium.
(1998). Odours as affective processing context for word evaluation: A case of cross-modal affective priming. Cognition and Emotion, 12, 601– 613
(2003). On the acquisition and activation of evaluative information in memory: The study of evaluative learning and affective priming combined. (pp. 139-168). In J. Musch & K. C. Klauer (Eds.), The psychology of evaluation: Affective processes in cognition and emotion. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
(1994). Affective and subjective familiarity ratings of 740 Dutch words. Psychologica Belgica, 34, 115– 139
(2002). Expectancy-learning and evaluative learning in human classical conditioning: Affective priming as an indirect and unobtrusive measure of conditioned stimulus valence. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40, 217– 234
(2004). An exploration of affective priming as an indirect measure of food attitudes. Appetite, 42, 279– 286
(2001). Implicit attitude formation through classical conditioning. Psychological Science, 12, 413– 417
(2002). Implicit acquisition and manifestation of classically conditioned attitudes. Social Cognition, 20, 89– 103
