Evaluative conditioning (EC) effects are often assumed to be based on a learned mental link between the CS (conditioned stimulus) and the US (unconditioned stimulus). We demonstrate that this link is not the only one that can underlie EC effects, but that if evaluative responses are actually given during the learning phase also a direct link between the CS and an evaluative response-a CS-ER lin...

The problem of pain, since the beginning of this century, has been dominated by the concept that pain is purely a sensory experience. Yet it has a unique, distinctively unpleasant, affective quality that differentiates it from sensory experiences such as sight, hearing or touch. . . . The motivational-affective dimension of pain is brought clearly into focus by clinical studies on frontal lobot...

We start this overview by discussing the place of emotions within the broader affective domain-how different are emotions from moods, sensations, and affective dispositions? Next, we examine the way emotions relate to their objects, emphasizing in the process their intimate relations to values. We move from this inquiry into the nature of emotion to an inquiry into their epistemology. Do they p...

BACKGROUND The authors present a procedural extension of the popular Implicit Association Test (IAT) that allows for indirect measurement of attitudes on multiple dimensions (e.g., safe-unsafe; young-old; innovative-conventional, etc.) rather than on a single evaluative dimension only (e.g., good-bad). METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS In two within-subjects studies, attitudes toward three autom...

Children's assessment of the value of different sources of information about psychological traits was investigated among 6- to 7-year-olds and 10- to 11-year-olds across 5 studies (N = 330). Older children were more likely than younger children to reject self-report as a source of information about the highly evaluative traits smart and honest, but no such age-related difference was seen for th...

This study examined the association between self-evaluative intrusive thoughts and performance in an Internet search task. Participants performed an information search on the Internet, completed the Cognitive Interference Questionnaire [CIQ; Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology, 46 (1978), 102], and then responded to a self-assessment questionnaire on their search performance. Participan...

Framed within social self-preservation theory, the present study investigated men's psychobiological responses to social-evaluative body image threats. University men ( n = 66) were randomly assigned to either a high or low social-evaluative body image threat condition. Participants provided saliva samples (to assess cortisol) and completed measures of state body shame prior to and following th...

Schwarz and Clore (1983) proposed that the effects of mood on evaluative judgements are due to people’s use of a “feeling heuristic”. Results of the present study suggest that this heuristic is particularly likely to be used under conditions of reduced processing capacity, induced by time pressure and competing task demands, as both factors intensified the effects of mood on evaluative judgemen...

Self-efficacy relates to an individual's perception of their capabilities. It has a clear self-evaluative dimension leading to high or low perceived self-efficacy. Individual differences in perceived self-efficacy have been shown to be better predictors of performance than previous achievement or ability and seem particularly important when individuals face adversity. The study investigated the...