Contingency Learning With Evaluative Stimuli

In two experiments, we tested the generality of the learning effects in the recently-introduced color-word contingency learning paradigm. Participants made speeded evaluative judgments to valenced target words. Each of a set of distracting nonwords was presented most often with either positive or negative target words. We observed that participants responded faster on trials that respected these contingencies than on trials that contradicted the contingencies. The contingencies also produced changes in liking: in a subsequent explicit evaluative rating task, participants rated positively-conditioned nonwords more positively than negatively-conditioned nonwords. Interestingly, contingency effects in the performance task correlated with this explicit rating effect in both experiments. In Experiment 2, all effects reported were independent of subjective and objective contingency awareness (which was completely lacking), even when awareness was measured at the item level. Our results reveal that learning in this type of performance task extends to nonword-valence contingencies and to responses different from those emitted during the performance task. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories about the processes that underlie contingency learning in performance tasks and for research on evaluative conditioning.

Preferability, Pleasingness, and Interestingness: Relationships between Evaluative Judgements in Empirical Aesthetics

Using evaluative rating scales, different groups of subjects made judgments of the preferability, pleasingness and interestingness of three types of stimuli: colors, music, and surnames. For all three types, preferability was strongly positively correlated with pleasingness. For the colors and music, preferability was also positively correlated with interestingness. For surnames, however, preferability was weakly and negatively correlated with interestingness. Also for surnames, the preferability judgments of different subjects were related in different ways to pleasingness and interestingness. For example, the preferability judgments of some subjects were strongly related to pleasingness while the those of others were not. Also, the former subjects tended to prefer low interestingness names, while the latters' preferences were unrelated to interestingness. The results have implications for the comparability of studies using different evaluative scales and for the future choice of scales. It is suggested that difficulties may attach to the commonly-used preferability scale.

Manipulations of Evaluative Rating Scales to Increase Validity

Standard five-point rating scales often do not allow raters to capture perceived differences between objects or individuals within a relatively narrow band of the evaluative dimension. In the frequency domain, using a longer rating scale or packing the rating scale with labels from a particular portion of the dimension of interest have both been shown by Hancock and Klockars in 1991 to increase rating validity for differentiating among a narrow range of performances. The present study investigates the effect of similar manipulations on the validity of ratings from evaluative rating scales. The correlations of evaluative ratings with experimentally manipulated (and hence known) performance tended to be fairly high regardless of the evaluative scale used.

Social Class and Race as Concomitants of Composite Halo in Teachers’ Evaluative Rating of Pupils

Two hypotheses were tested: (1) Teachers’ ratings of high-SES pupils will exhibit less composite halo than will teachers’ ratings of low-SES pupils, and (2) The SES of pupils will have a greater effect on composite halo in ratings than will the race of the pupil or teacher. Principal components analysis was used to investigate the hypotheses, using teachers’ ratings of more than 8,000 fourth-grade pupils on 21 related behavior changes. The hypotheses were confirmed. The results are at variance with one set of literature while in support of another set of literature. It was suggested that the relationships between social distance, race, SES, and evaluator accuracy (one example of which is absence of composite halo) be resurrected for closer scrutiny in the face of conflicting evidence.