Mere exposure to subliminal affects can transfer value to neutral stimuli via misattribution

Evidence

Subliminal attitude conditioning. Several researchers have sought to induce positive or negative attitudes to neutral stimuli by presenting a very briefly flashed pleasant or unpleasant stimulus just before presenting each clearly visible neutral stimulus. Subsequent affective judgments of the initially neutral stimuli provide a test of whether the affective value of the flashed stimulus transfers to the neutral stimulus. Although reliable procedures for obtaining this result are not yet well described, a few researchers have reported successful efforts (K. Edwards, 1990; Krosnick, Betz, Jussim, & Lynn, 1992; Niedenthal, 1990; Murphy & Zajonc, 1993). This procedure has occasionally been described as attitude conditioning; however, the “conditioning” label may be unwarranted because of both the small number of trials used and the reversal of the usual neutral-stimulus-first ordering of conditioning procedures. The result may better be understood as an implicit attitude effect, in which an attitude evoked by the first (briefly flashed) stimulus is mistakenly attributed to the second stimulus. — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition, 105

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reading purpose: this is a genuine implicit (non-professed) attitude induction procedure, showing affect transfer without conscious awareness — the kind of measure to weigh against the MOC’s explicit/identity defense mechanisms. — connects to: Attitudes activated by one object can be misattributed to another — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes,…, 30; Halo effect is implicit attitude diffusion from one attribute to unrelated judgments. — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes,…, 97; Mere exposure effects depend on fluency misattributed to liking, not memory. — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes,…, 103 (+8 more)
• DEFINE: Introduces the subliminal attitude conditioning paradigm and explicitly distinguishes implicit attitude effects from classical conditioning labels.

Broader Connections

• Subliminal racial priming shifts judgments even among people low in prejudice #exemplifies (0.84) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 299
• Subliminal stereotype priming raises hostility judgments regardless of stated prejudice. #exemplifies (0.83) — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition, 199
• Mere exposure effects strengthen as memory for exposures is reduced. #corroborates (0.82)
• Conscious attention disrupts the influence of weak automatic cues on perception and memory. #expands (0.78) — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition, 229
• Redirecting attention to a biasing cue reduces or reverses the implicit effect it produces. #complicates (0.76) — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition, 241
• Discriminatory acts rest on shared mental representations even when unintentional #expands (0.75)
• Empathic people are more susceptible to subliminal cues and influence #qualifies (0.74) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 945
• Implicit biases can be consciously overridden through deliberate attention #contradicts (0.72) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1362