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Category: Project

Description: The current project examines, through two independent experiments, whether the neuroticism trait moderates the evaluative conditioning effect in ambiguous conditions. Evaluative conditioning (EC) is an effect that consists of repeated presentations of a conditioned stimulus (CS) with a positive or negative unconditioned stimulus (US), resulting in a valence transfer from the US to the CS. To further investigate the interindividual differences of neuroticism on this effect, we introduced the ambiguous conditions that could help us to capture the natural tendency of highly neurotic people in transferring negative valence. Experiment 1 presented an experimental manipulation at the US level by using ambivalent USs (i.e., a positive picture and a negative picture merged into one image), whereas Experiment 2 provided a reinforcement manipulation by presenting two CSs with positive USs in half of the presentations and with negative USs in another half of presentations.