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Category: Project

Description: After co-occurrence of a neutral stimulus with an affective stimulus, the evaluation of the neutral stimulus typically acquires the valence of the affective stimulus. However, relational qualifiers can reverse this effect (e.g., people prefer creatures that co-occur with negative events because they end negative events over creatures that repeatedly end positive events). We tested the hypothesis that an assimilative EC occurs in parallel to the effect of relational qualifiers. Participants evaluated targets under time pressure, a condition that, according to some evaluation models, restricts the effect of relational information more than the effect of co-occurrence. Experiment 1 found only suggestive evidence that time pressure decreases the effect of relational qualifiers relatively to a parallel assimilative EC effect. After we changed materials for Experiment 2, the same design found more conclusive evidence: Under time pressure, people preferred creatures that ended positive sounds over creatures that ended negative sounds. Without time pressure, the preference was for creatures that ended negative sounds. The finding supports the hypothesis that relational qualifiers do not cancel the assimilative effect of co-occurrence on evaluation.