Moors, A., Boddez, Y., & De Houwer, J. (2017). The power of goal-directed processes in the causation of emotional and other actions. Emotion Review, 9, 310-318.
Standard dual process models in the action domain postulate that stimulus-driven
processes are responsible for suboptimal behavior because they take them to be rigid and
automatic and therefore the default. We propose an alternative dual process model in which
goal-directed processes are the default instead. We then transfer the dual process logic from
the action domain to the emotion domain. This reveals that emotional action tendencies are
often attributed to stimulus-driven processes. Our alternative model submits that emotional
action tendencies can also be caused by goal-directed processes. We evaluate the type of
empirical evidence required for validating our model and we consider implications of our
model for behavior change, encouraging strategies focused on the expectancies and values of
action outcomes.
Braem, S., Liefooghe, B., De Houwer, J., Brass, M., & Abrahamse, E. (2017). There are limits to the effects of task instructions: Making the automatic effects of task instructions context-specific takes practice. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 43, 394-403.
Unlike other animals, humans have the unique ability to share and use verbal instructions to prepare
for upcoming tasks. Recent research showed that instructions are sufficient for the automatic, reflexlike activation of responses. However, systematic studies into the limits of these automatic effects of
task instructions remain relatively scarce. In this study, we set out to investigate whether this
instruction-based automatic activation of responses can be context-dependent. Specifically,
participants performed a task of which the stimulus-response rules and context (location on the screen)
could either coincide or not with those of an instructed to-be-performed task (whose instructions
changed every run). In two experiments, we showed that the instructed task rules had an automatic
impact on performance – performance was slowed down when the merely instructed task rules did not
coincide, but, importantly, this effect was not context-dependent. Interestingly, a third and fourth
experiment suggests that context dependency can actually be observed, but only when practicing the
task in its appropriate context for over sixty trials or after a sufficient amount of practice on a fixed
context (the context was the same for all instructed tasks). Together, these findings seem to suggest
that instructions can establish stimulus-response representations that have a reflexive impact on
behavior, but are insensitive to the context in which the task is known to be valid. Instead, contextspecific task representations seem to require practice.
Maes, E., Boddez, Y., Alfei, J. M., Krypotos, A. M., D’Hooge, R., De Houwer, J., & Beckers, T. (2016). The elusive nature of the blocking effect: 15 failures to replicate. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145, e49-e71.
With the discovery of the blocking effect, learning theory took a huge leap forward, because
blocking provided a crucial clue that surprise is what drives learning. This in turn stimulated the
development of novel association-formation theories of learning. Eventually, the ability to explain
blocking became nothing short of a touchstone for the validity of any theory of learning, including
propositional and other non-associative theories. The abundance of publications reporting a
blocking effect and the importance attributed to it suggest that it is a robust phenomenon. Yet, in
the current paper we report fifteen failures to observe a blocking effect despite the use of
procedures that are highly similar or identical to those used in published studies. Those failures raise
doubts regarding the canonical nature of the blocking effect and call for a reevaluation of the central
status of blocking in theories of learning. They may also illustrate how publication bias influences
our perspective towards the robustness and reliablilty of seemingly established effects in the
psychological literature.
De Houwer, J., & Hughes, S. (2016). Evaluative conditioning as a symbolic phenomenon: On the relation between evaluative conditioning, evaluative conditioning via instructions, and persuasion. Social Cognition, 34, 480-494.
Evaluative conditioning (EC) is sometimes portrayed as a primitive way of changing attitudes
that is fundamentally different from persuasion via arguments. We provide a new perspective
on the nature of EC and its relation to persuasion by exploring the idea that stimulus pairings
can function as a symbol that conveys the nature of the relation between stimuli. We put
forward the concept of symbolic EC to refer to changes in liking that occur because stimulus
pairings function as symbols. The idea of symbolic EC is consistent with at least some current
theories of persuasion. It clarifies what EC research can add to the understanding of the origins
of our preferences and has implications for how (symbolic and non-symbolic) EC can be
established, the boundaries of EC research, and cognitive and functional models of EC.
