People often show divergent evaluative responses to the same object. We may feel a spontaneous positive reaction to potato chips even though we consider them unhealthy and detrimental for our goal to lose weight; we may have spontaneous negative reactions to members of stigmatized groups even though we value egalitarianism and perceive ourselves as nonprejudiced; we may show a spontaneous negative response to a small spider even though we know that it is entirely harmless; and sometimes we may experience spontaneous feelings of romantic attraction for another person even though we know that this person is not a good match. What all of these examples have in common is that they involve a conflict between spontaneous evaluative responses (sometimes called “implicit evaluations”) and deliberate evaluative judgments (sometimes called “explicit evaluations”). In the Social Cognition Lab, we are interested in the psychological underpinnings of spontaneous and deliberate evaluations, in particular the role of what we refer to as associative and propositional processes. In our research, we investigate how these processes interact with each other, how they jointly influence social judgments and social behavior, and what factors lead to changes in the two kinds of processes and their resulting evaluative responses.
Associative-Propositional Evaluation Model
A substantial amount of this research is based on the Associative-Propositional Evaluation (APE) Model, which distinguishes between the activation of associations in memory and the validation of the propositional information implied by activated associations (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006, 2007, 2011). The original purpose of the model was to provide an integration of apparently inconsistent findings in the literature on implicit and explicit attitude change. In several of our ongoing studies, we use the core assumptions of the APE Model to gain deeper insights into the mechanisms underlying different kinds of evaluative responses and related social psychological phenomena. Examples include the role of associative and propositional processes in attitude formation and change (e.g., Gawronski & LeBel, 2008); cognitive dissonance (e.g., Gawronski & Strack, 2004); cognitive balance (e.g., Langer, Walther, Gawronski, & Blank, 2009); prejudice and stereotyping (e.g., Gawronski, Peters, Brochu, & Strack, 2008); and self-representation (e.g., Peters & Gawronski, 2011). More recently, several projects have started to investigate the role of associative and propositional processes in various applied contexts, including political decision-making (e.g., Galdi, Arcuri, & Gawronski, 2008) and clinical disorders (e.g., Ouimet, Gawronski, & Dozois, 2009).
Generalization versus Contextualization
Challenging a widespread assumption in the literature on spontaneous evaluation, a considerable body of research has shown that spontaneous evaluations can be highly context-dependent, such that the same object may elicit different evaluative responses depending on the context in which it is encountered. In the APE Model, we argue that contextual cues influence the pattern of object-related associations that is activated in response to that object. However, this explanation is insufficient as long as it does not specify the conditions under which contextual cues activate the same or different associations in response to a given object. To address this limitation, we have started to investigate the learning processes that lead to context-dependent versus context-independent evaluative responses (Rydell & Gawronski, 2009). Expanding on this work, we recently proposed a representational account of generalization versus contextualization effects in evaluative learning that specifies the conditions under which spontaneous evaluations reflect either (a) initially acquired information; (b) subsequently acquired, counterattitudinal information; or (c) a mixture of both (Gawronski, Rydell, Vervliet, & De Houwer, 2010). In our ongoing research, we are testing a variety of novel predictions derived from this account to provide deeper insights into the mechanisms that underlie context effects on spontaneous and deliberate evaluations.
Mechanisms Underlying Implicit Measures
Another line of research addresses the mechanisms underlying various measurement procedures designed to assess spontaneous evaluative responses (e.g., implicit association test; affective priming). One product of this research is the Quadruple Process Model (Quad-Model) which disentangles the contribution of four qualitatively distinct processes to performance on implicit measures (Conrey, Sherman, Gawronski, Hugenberg, & Groom, 2005). Expanding on this research, several of our ongoing studies investigate the role of response interference processes in implicit measures. A recent product of this research is a measurement model that describes the interplay of associative and attentional processes in response interference tasks (Gawronski, Deutsch, LeBel, & Peters, 2008), which may help to determine whether an experimentally induced effect is indeed produced by associative processes or instead by method-related mechanisms involved in response interference tasks. Several studies inspired by this account have found that the same experimental manipulation can lead to different effects on otherwise equivalent measures that presumably assess the same construct (e.g., Deutsch & Gawronski, 2009; Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2005; Gawronski, Cunningham, LeBel, & Deutsch, 2010). These findings point to the fundamental role of method-related factors in shaping the responses assessed by implicit measures, which has important implications for the interpretation of emprical findings obtained with different measurement procedures.
Research Funding and Awards
Research in the Social Cognition Lab has been generously supported by grants from the Canada Research Chairs Program, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Research Fund, the TransCoop Program of the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation, the Academic Development Fund of The University of Western Ontario, and the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation. In addition, members of the Social Cognition Lab have received various awards for their research, including the Theoretical Innovation Prize from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the Early Career Award from the International Social Cognition Network, the Early Researcher Award from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, the Charlotte-and-Karl-Bühler Prize by the German Psychological Society, the Early Career Best Paper Award from the European Journal of Social Psychology, the Faculty Scholar Award from The University of Western Ontario, multiple Graduate Student Travel Awards from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and graduate scholarships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program, the Fonds Quebeqois de la Recherche sur la Societe et la Culture, and the Richard J. Schmeelk Program.
