Evaluative Conditioning 2.0: Direct versus Associative Transfer of Affect to Brands

A basic assumption in advertising is that brands become more well-liked after they were presented in positive contexts. This assumption is warranted because studies on ‘evaluative conditioning’ have demonstrated that when a brand is repeatedly presented together with positive affective stimuli (e.g., beautiful people, nature scenes, celebrity endorsers …), this results indeed in a long-lasting positive effect on the evaluation of the brand. This dissertation deals with the primary question of what is causing this change in attitudes. It is shown that there are at least two fundamentally different psychological processes that can cause this change in brand attitude. First, it is possible that through the establishment of memory associations between the brand and the positive affective stimuli, the brand becomes more positively evaluated (associative affect transfer). Second, it is also possible to transfer positive affect directly to the brand. In this case, affect ‘rubs off’ to the brand without the need to establish memory associations (direct affect transfer). The conditions under which affect transfer will be associative versus direct are identified. It is also demonstrated that achieving direct affect transfer carries distinct advantages for advertisers. With direct affect transfer – as opposed to associative affect transfer – the brand becomes immune to the negative effects of its endorsers falling from grace, to interference of the memory traces and to consumers’ counter arguing strategies

Puppets on a String

For more than a century, scholars in psychology have debated whether humans are ‘of two minds,’ that is, whether they have both conscious and unconscious thoughts, and whether both conscious and unconscious thought processes determine their behavior. According to Freud’s iceberg model, conscious thought is just the tip of the iceberg, with most of our thought processes taking place unconsciously. Marketing scholars and practitioners have embraced the iceberg model with great enthusiasm. They have incorporated models where people’s drives and motivations are built in layers, with only the top layer consciously accessible, but the real drivers hidden underneath. According to one of the most influential contemporary theories, human thinking is governed by dual systems. System 1, it is argued, is the evolutionarily oldest system, based in parts of the brain we share with lower animals, operates unconsciously, uncontrollably, with low effort, has huge capacity, is fast, nonverbal, parallel, and associative. System 2, conversely, is evolutionarily more recent, resides in our frontal cortex, operates consciously, controllably, with high effort, has small capacity, is slow, verbal, serial, and based on rules. Despite their intuitive appeal, dual system theories have been challenged in recent years. I discuss some of their more problematic aspects and the research I have conducted testing core propositions of the dual system approach. Especially my research on the way brands become more well-liked through advertising and conditioning procedures is highly relevant for the debate, but so is research on people’s risk perceptions and self-control performance. Overall, I have seen support for some of the key predictions of dual process theory, but no support at all for its strong claim that mental processes should clearly belong to one of two systems with highly separable features. I argue that we need to acknowledge that the human mind cannot be neatly divided into two complementary processing systems. Rather, we should recognize that thought processes can be characterized to a greater or lesser extent by some but not all the features of automaticity. Researchers should start recognizing the full complexity of the human mind and embrace research that is more detailed, more precise – and perhaps a bit less grand in its claims

Gender identity and breast cancer campaigns

Concerning itself with understanding how marketing methods and tools can be of benefit to healthcare professionals, health marketing is an area of research that has grown substantially in recent years. Of much interest to the sector is whether awareness campaigns are effective in increasing the public’s perceived vulnerability to any given disease

Gender Identity Salience and Perceived Vulnerability to Breast Cancer

Contrary to predictions based on cognitive accessibility, heightened gender identity salience resulted in lower perceived vulnerability and reduced donation behavior to identity-specific risks (e.g., breast cancer). No such effect was manifest with identity-neutral risks. Establishing the importance of self-identity, perceived breast cancer vulnerability was lower when women were

Evaluative Conditioning 2.0: Referential versus Intrinsic Learning of Affective Value

Evaluative conditioning is an important determinant of consumers’ likes and dislikes. Three experiments show that it can result from two types of learning. First, stimulus-stimulus (S – S) or referential learning allows a conditioned stimulus (e.g., a brand) to acquire valence by triggering (unconscious) recollections of the unconditioned stimulus (e.g., a pleasant image). Second, stimulus-response (S – R) or intrinsic learning allows a conditioned stimulus to bind directly with the affective response that was previously generated by the unconditioned stimulus. We show when each type of learning occurs and demonstrate the consequences for the robustness of conditioned brand attitudes

The Emotional Information Processing System is Risk Averse: Ego-Depletion and Investment Behavior

Two experiments show that a shortage of self-regulatory resources results in more risk aversion in mixed-gamble (gain/loss) situations. The findings support a dual process view that distinguishes between a rational and an affective information processing system, in which self-regulatory resources are the necessary fuel for the rational system. Depending on the expected values of risk seeking versus risk averse behavior, ego depletion can have negative (experiment 1) as well as positive (experiment 2) consequences for investment behavior