A critical review of classical conditioning effects on consumer behavior

Australasian Marketing Journal 20 (2012) 282–296

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A critical review of classical conditioning effects on consumer behavior Chanthika Pornpitakpan University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 15 July 2011 Revised 14 June 2012 Accepted 3 July 2012 Available online 28 July 2012 Keywords: Classical conditioning Pavlovian conditioning Literature review

a b s t r a c t This paper reviews extant research in classical conditioning effects in consumer behavior and advertising contexts to determine whether they are real or illusory. The empirical results reveal that in cases where classical conditioning effects were found, they could be countermined by the deficiencies in research methodologies, demand artifacts, the mediating role of contingency awareness, or some alternative mechanisms. In cases where the effects were not observed, the failure could be attributed to violations of the conditions for classical conditioning to occur or absence of contingency and demand awareness. It is concluded that thus far there has been no convincing evidence for classical conditioning effects on consumer behavior. Suggestions for future research in this area are presented. Ó 2012 Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Inspired by classical conditioning principles, many ads show the advertised product together with celebrities or pleasant stimuli (objects, scenes, persons, and so forth) once or several times with a hope that positive feelings from those stimuli will transfer to the product and thus inducing its liking. Classical conditioning has been generally accepted in consumer behavior literature as a mechanism producing advertising effects (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2010), as a possible mechanism in the peripheral route of persuasion (Edell and Burke, 1984; Petty et al., 1983), and as pertinent in passive consumption context (Gorn, 1982; Greenwald and Leavitt, 1984). According to the classical conditioning model of learning, which is based on Pavlov’s (1927) work, an unconditioned stimulus (hereafter referred to as US or USs for the plural form) is a biologically significant stimulus such as food, pain, electric shock that generates a response (for example, salivation when seeing certain foods) from the start; this response is referred to as an unconditioned response. Repeated pairings of a conditioned stimulus (hereafter referred to as CS or CSs for the plural form, for example, the ring of a bell) with an US (for example, meat paste) will enable the CS to elicit a conditioned response (for example, salivation) in an unconscious and automatic manner. When the US is an affect (Razran, 1938), for instance, music and humor, the conditioning may be referred to as affective conditioning. 1.1. Types of classical conditioning Within the paradigm of classical conditioning, it has been proposed that a distinction be made between different types of conditioning, namely, signal learning and evaluative learning (Baeyens E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected]

and De Houwer, 1995; Baeyens et al., 1998; Hammerl and Grabitz, 1996). In the signal-learning notion of classical conditioning, an organism engages a higher cognitive process and learns the ‘‘ifthen’’ relationship between the CS and the US (Rescorla and Wagner, 1972). Repeated pairings of the two stimuli to be associated is essential in establishing and strengthening their associative link (Martindale, 1991). Through a signal learning process (Rescorla, 1988), increased repetition of the pairing of two stimuli fortifies confidence that the presence of one stimulus predicts the presence of the other. The contingency or statistical correlation between the CS and the US is an important determinant of signal learning. Evaluative (attitude) conditioning, on the other hand, concerns the acquisition of preferences and refers to the change in valence of initially neutral CSs after pairing with positive or negative USs. Evaluative conditioning is usually conceptualized as a form of evaluative learning that occurs without awareness of the CS–US contingencies (De Houwer et al., 2001; Stahl et al., 2009). In a typical evaluative conditioning study (e.g., De Houwer et al., 2001; Walther, 2002), a subjectively neutral stimulus is repeatedly paired with a subjectively liked or disliked stimulus, leading to a valence shift in the formerly neutral stimulus. That is, the CS in an evaluative conditioning paradigm does not attain a predictive value but simply obtains the affective qualities of the US. Three major characteristics of evaluative conditioning are as follows. First, evaluative conditioning does not seem to depend on contingency awareness of the CS and the US (Baeyens et al., 1990; De Houwer et al., 2001). Second, it does not appear to rely on the statistical CS–US contingency but seems to be sensitive to contiguity, that is, to spatiotemporal CS–US co-occurrences (Baeyens et al., 1993; De Houwer et al., 2001). Therefore, weak contingency in an evaluative learning paradigm (e.g., single CS or US presentations in the acquisition phase) does not automatically

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reduce conditioning, as would be the case in signal learning (Baeyens et al., 1993). Third, after successful evaluative conditioning, single CS presentations may not alter its valence; in other words, evaluative conditioning seems to be extinction resistant (Baeyens et al., 1988; De Houwer et al., 2001). However, it has been criticized that the conclusions about evaluative conditioning without CS–US contingency awareness often relied on questionable experimental designs or failed to capture subtle but substantial manifestations of such awareness (Field, 2000; Field and Davey, 1999; Hammerl, 2000; Lovibond and Shanks, 2002). This view/critique implies that the differentiation between signal learning and evaluative conditioning as two types of classical conditioning is rather obscure and in fact, evaluative conditioning is merely a situation when CS–US contingency awareness cannot be detected and the focus is on the change in valence of initially neutral CSs after pairing with positive or negative USs. It follows from this view/critique that CS–US contingency awareness underlies any observed classical conditioning effect. 1.2. Objectives and contributions of the study Consumer researchers have empirically investigated classical conditioning effects after Gorn’s (1982) experiments. The results, unfortunately, have been mixed. Given three decades of classical conditioning studies in consumer behavior and the prevalent application of classical conditioning principle knowingly or unknowingly in advertising, this study aims to review classical conditioning research in the realm of consumer behavior and advertising to find out whether the effects are real or illusory. In addition, the study discusses the common weaknesses of research in this area and suggests what future research in this field should improve. Sharing the same view discussed in the preceding paragraph, this review covers studies in both signal learning and evaluative conditioning paradigms of classical conditioning as long as they involve consumer behavior and advertising. Due to space constraint, not all studies reviewed will be evaluated in detail. The contributions of this study are two. First, in terms of academic contribution, this study pinpoints common weaknesses of research in classical conditioning and suggests ways to improve research in this area in order to increase internal validity and yield results that are more credible. Second, in terms of managerial contribution, this study provides guidelines for advertisers whether they should use the classical conditioning principle in designing and producing ads, which are usually costly. For example, a television commercial involving non-celebrity actors, storyboarding, and script writing with a length of 30-s costs on average US$3500–US$35000 to produce (Maus Media Group, 2011). The cost to create a full page colored ad by a freelancer may start from US$2500 and much more by a large advertising agency. The media expenses associated with showing the ads are even much higher. For instance, the average price of a 30-s television spot in the first quarter of 2011 in the USA was US$108,956 (Crupi, 2011). A full-page ad in Cosmopolitan magazine costs US$244,100 for colored and US$195,300 for blackand-white ads, respectively (Cosmopolitan, 2012). Clearly, it is essential that marketers know whether ads based on classical conditioning concepts are effective given such large expenditure of producing and displaying ads.

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2.1. The CS lacking predictiveness of the US In order for classical conditioning to occur, the CS should predict the US. The CS will have low predictiveness of the US if (i) both stimuli are presented simultaneously; (ii) the CS is presented constantly, followed occasionally by the US (Brown and Jenkins, 1968); (iii) either the US or the CS is frequently encountered alone; (iv) the US comes before the CS (i.e., backward conditioning); and (v) the CS and the US are presented randomly with respect to each other. When this predictive relation is violated, the conditioned behavior will not be established. However, Shurtleff and Ayres (1981) found backward conditioning. Spetch et al. (1981) reviewed experimental evidence and concluded that backward conditioning could produce effects similar to those obtained from forward conditioning. In addition, such effects could not be explained by factors other than stimulus pairing. Rachman’s (1991) review suggests that conditioning can occur even when the CS and the US are not contiguous. In order to say that conditioning occurs in an experiment, appropriate control groups are needed for comparison with the conditioning groups (Rescorla, 1967). The experimental group is exposed to the CS, followed by the US. A random control group is exposed to the same quantity of CSs and USs as the experimental group, but these stimuli are presented randomly with respect to each other. Classical conditioning can be said to occur only if there is a response in the experimental group but not in the random control group. This way, the differences between the two groups can be explained by the degree to which the CS predicts the US and cannot be attributed to differences in familiarity with the CS or the US, i.e., the mere exposure effect (Zajonc, 1968) or to any interaction between them (pseudoconditioned responses). Even though the CS precedes and predicts the US, conditioning may not occur under the situations detailed below. 2.2. Overshadowing Overshadowing can prevent classical conditioning from occurring (Pavlov, 1927). In an overshadowing procedure, two CSs different in salience, such as a loud noise and a dim light, are presented together before the US. Conditioning may occur to the more salient CS (in this example, the loud noise) only because the less salient CS is overshadowed by the more salient one. This suggests that salient stimuli coinciding with the target CS (for instance, a highly sexy model and a brand in an ad) be removed. 2.3. Blocking Blocking can forbid classical conditioning (Kamin, 1969). In a blocking procedure, an individual is given experience that CS1 is predictive of an US (for example, dark clouds predict rain). Later, CS1 and CS2 (for example, a barometer that also predicts rain) are presented together, followed by the same US. No conditioned response occurs to CS2, however. In effect, prior experience with CS1 blocks conditioning to CS2. In marketing, this indicates that a familiar US should not be used. For instance, using a celebrity endorser who has been well established as an endorser for other products suppresses forming an association between that celebrity and a newly endorsed product (Till, 1998).

2. Obstacles and methodological requirements for classical conditioning

2.4. US pre-exposure effect

It is essential that the conditions hindering classical conditioning be examined so that conflicting studies can be assessed. Primarily based on McSweeney and Bierley’s (1984) review, the obstructions to classical conditioning are as follows.

Classical conditioning will not occur if individuals have encountered the US alone (Mis and Moore, 1973; Rescorla, 1973). The implication is the same as that for the blocking effect, namely, a familiar US, such as a famous song, should not be used.

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2.5. Latent inhibition Latent inhibition also forestalls classical conditioning (Lubow, 1973). In a latent inhibition procedure, the CS is presented alone several times before it is paired with the US, resulting in little conditioning. A marketing implication of latent inhibition is that using a familiar CS, such as a well-known product, will not be effective, and it is easier to classically condition responses to unfamiliar CSs such as new brands. 2.6. Garcia effect Garcia effect (Garcia and Koelling, 1966) refers to an improper match between the CS and the US. It cannot be assumed, as a result, that any stimulus can be used as a CS or an US. For example, in Garcia and Koelling’s experiments, an aversion (conditioned response) was easily conditioned to a flavor (CS1) that was followed by sickness (US1) but not by shock (US2). In other words, the flavor-sickness CS–US pairing was appropriate but the flavor-shock pairing was not. Similarly, an aversion (conditioned response) could develop to a light and a noise (CS2) that were followed by shock (US2) but not by sickness (US1). That is, the light/noiseshock CS–US pairing was suitable but the light/noise-sickness pairing was not. It has been speculated that stimuli that biologically belong together, such as tastes and sickness, results in effective conditioning. Generally, it is easier to build an associative link between two stimuli when they are similar or related to each other (McSweeney and Bierley, 1984). In marketing, the choice of the US should correspond to the associations the brand already has or seeks to have. For instance, Kim et al. (1996) demonstrated that the pairing of pizza delivery (CS) with a race car (US) improved respondents’ beliefs about the speed of the pizza delivery service. ‘‘Starter’’ athletic apparel employed the durable and venerable baseball player Cal Ripken to emphasize that Starter jackets were also durable. In the 1990’s, Pepsi used many endorsers such as Michael J. Fox, Madonna, and Michael Jackson to enhance its youth image. Authoritative, genteel, and cultured John Houseman fit well with the investment firm Smith Barney. However, McDonald’s used John Houseman for only a short time because his image did not go well with a family-oriented fast food restaurant (Till, 1998). 2.7. Insufficient pairings The acquisition speed of conditioned responses can range from one to many pairings of the CS and the US. The acquisition of conditioned responses will be faster for CSs that are more salient (Kamin and Brimer, 1963; Rescorla, 1972), for USs that are stronger (Pavlov, 1927; Wagner et al., 1964), and for longer inter-trial intervals (Terrace et al., 1975), which refers to longer time between successive CS–US pairings. Salient CSs are those that are intense physically (for example, brighter lights) or have acquired some psychological importance to a person (for example, his or her own name) (McSweeney and Bierley, 1984). 3. Evidence for classical conditioning effects The evaluation of most studies below is based on the above impediments and methodological requirements for classical conditioning. The studies can be grouped by the following methodological scheme: 2 (familiarity of the CSs: familiar, unfamiliar) by 2 (familiarity of the USs: familiar, unfamiliar) by 2 (number of repeated CS–US pairings: single, multiple) by 3 (order of CSs and USs in the pairing: CSs preceding USs, simultaneous, USs preceding CSs). The full classification scheme results in 24 groups in total,

which seems to be unnecessarily complicated. Therefore, the three patterns of ‘‘order of CSs and USs in the pairing’’ are merged but will be mentioned for each study. Some groups contain no studies and therefore do not appear as sub-section headings. 3.1. Studies using familiar CSs, familiar USs, and a single CS–US pairing Gorn (1982) provided the first support for classical conditioning in consumer behavior. He showed students slides of either a beige or a blue pen (a CS) while having them listen to either liked or disliked music (an US). When given a choice of taking a beige or a blue pen as a gift, participants chose the pen associated with the liked music and avoided the one associated with the disliked music. Gorn’s (1982) findings generated some concerns that inspired many later studies to replicate, extend, or refute his findings. It seemed rather difficult for a single simultaneous pairing of the CS and the US to produce the conditioned response because the CS will not predict the US if they are presented simultaneously. While classical conditioning may occur after one trial (Shurtleff and Ayres, 1981), it usually entails a very strong US such as an intense shock or a nauseating drug (Bierley et al., 1985). In addition, participants in the liked music condition (one-minute extract of music from the movie ‘‘Grease’’) were likely to be familiar with the US (the music), constituting an US pre-exposure effect or even a blocking effect if it had been elsewhere constantly associated with some other CSs. Although no evidence in the study indicated that participants had heard the music with other stimuli, since the music was from a popular movie, the chance of participants not having heard this music before participating in the experiment should be rather low. Beige and blue pens are very typical to students, giving rise to a latent inhibition effect, i.e., a situation where the CS has been encountered alone several times before it is paired with the US. All these made it rather unlikely for classical conditioning to emerge. The observed classical conditioning effect in Gorn (1982) might have been due to demand characteristics, which are rather prevalent in classical conditioning studies involving human beings. Some aspects of his procedure might have clued participants to the study’s objectives. For example, participants were told that the purpose was to evaluate ad music and pen color choice. The pen color choice was obtrusively measured by telling participants wanting different pen colors to walk to the opposite sides of the room, hence underscoring the importance of color choice in their minds. Furthermore, the experiment was administered in a large class, so interaction among participants was possible and could have affected the findings in an unpredictable manner. Finally, because no control procedure was used, alternative explanations such as the mere exposure effect and pseudoconditioned responses could not be ruled out. Feinberg (1986) conducted a series of experiments in which he manipulated the presence or absence of credit card stimuli in the context of experimental tasks requiring participants to evaluate the product’s worth and to indicate how much they would donate money actually or be willing to donate to a charity. The credit card served as an US while the product or charity activities served as CSs. The results showed that the mere presence of a credit card led to greater valuations and donations and that participants’ decision time was faster in the presence of a credit card symbol. The classical conditioning effects observed in Feinberg’s (1986) experiments were subject to some limitations. First, Feinberg did not remove the US – the credit card itself – when measuring the conditioned response, which means participants who viewed catalog pictures of products in the presence of credit card stimuli also evaluated the worth of these products in the presence of a credit card. Second, the CS lacked predictiveness of the US because a credit card (a US) is frequently encountered alone in our daily life.

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Third was the US pre-exposure effect – conditioning will not occur if consumers have been preexposed to the US alone. Finally, all his experiments employed a single simultaneous paring of the CS and the US. While classical conditioning may occur after one trial, it usually entails a very strong US such as an intense shock or a nauseating drug. Demand artifacts might be responsible for the observed classical conditioning effects. The mood induction experiment in Groenland and Schoormans (1994) is included here to demonstrate a single pairing effect with the US preceding the CS (backward conditioning). The mood induction was operationalized in a way that only mood induction could explain the occurrence of classical conditioning. Based on the pretest, a fragment of popular classical music (pleasant music) and a fragment of hard rock music (unpleasant music) were selected. Both fragments were instrumental. Participants’ personal favorite colors were also pretested, with blue and green pens being selected for the experiment. Participants were split into two groups: one exposed to pleasant music while the other to unpleasant one. The experimenters explained that a pen manufacturer wished to know whether music could be used in a pen commercial. A 7-min musical fragment was played to induce mood. Five seconds after the music ended, a series of three slides of a green pen was presented for 10 s each. Between slides was a break for 2 s. Then respondents filled a short questionnaire, which included questions evaluating the pen shown on the slide, and chose a pen (from a box containing many green and blue pens in equal number) to evaluate its physical attributes. Next, they answered another short questionnaire containing questions evaluating the music, mood, physical qualities of the pen chosen, filler questions, and others. The results revealed that the pen evaluation was more positive in the positive mood induction (pleasant music) than in the negative mood induction (unpleasant music), indicating that mood influenced product evaluation. Furthermore, the expected pen color was chosen more often by participants in a positive mood induction (pleasant music) than by those in the negative mood induction (unpleasant music), meaning mood induction influenced not only product evaluation but also product choice. Groenland and Schoormans (1994) used a familiar CS (a green pen) and a familiar US (a fragment of popular classical music) with the US preceding the CS (backward conditioning) once only. All of these procedures are obstacles to classical conditioning. Tom (1995) attempted to replicate Gorn’s (1982) results by using music (positive music using Kenny G’s Song Bird song versus negative music using John Lennon’s Number 9 Dream song) as an US. Two-hundred and twenty-seven students saw an advertised pen on a slide while the music was played for 60 s and had to pay attention to the presentation (attended stimulus), during which a neutral Chinese ideograph (unattended stimulus) was flashed 12 times by a tachistoscope on the same screen for 0.02 s. Then, participants chose a pen and a symbol as a logo for the pen. The results revealed that positive music led to higher choice rates for the advertised pen and Chinese ideograph, compared to the unadvertised pen and Chinese ideograph. Nevertheless, the use of negative music as an US did not affect the preference for either the advertised pen or advertised Chinese ideograph. This null result will be discussed again in Section 4. Same as Gorn’s (1982) study, Tom (1995) used a familiar CS and US with a single simultaneous pairing of the CS and the US. The instruction for participants to help select music for a pen ad could have heightened the importance of both the pen and the music. Lie et al. (2010) conducted two experiments in New Zealand to replicate Feinberg’s (1986) study. In Experiment 1, 80 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to either task A or task B, and within each task, they were randomly assigned to either the credit card present condition or the credit card absent condition. Upon

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completion of the tasks, participants answered questionnaires measuring prior credit card use and awareness. Task A consisted of a paper catalog of 12 consumer items, all of which were brand-neutral and were selected because they were similar to those used by Feinberg (1986). Each photo was presented in the middle of a white sheet of paper, with two questions written beneath the photo. The first question (a distracter question) asked about the most distinctive feature of the item, while the second question asked how much money the participant was willing to spend on the item. Participants were individually tested and seated at a table with a consumer products catalog placed in front of them. For participants in the credit card present condition, a laminated picture of the VISA and MasterCard logos was located on the upper left corner of the table, and these participants were told the credit card picture was left over from another experiment. For participants in the credit card absent condition, the credit card picture was absent from the table. All participants were instructed to view each of the catalog items and answer the two questions for each item. Task B was a computer-based version of task A written in VisualBasic.NET and consisted of 12 trials, each of which presented one of the consumer items (same as those in task A) in the center of the screen. A question-and-answer box was displayed beneath each picture, with an ‘‘Accept’’ button located beneath the answer box. Participants were tested either individually or in groups of up to 12 persons and were presented with each of the 12 trials (i.e., items). For each item, participants were first asked, ‘‘What is the most distinctive feature of the product?’’ followed by ‘‘Enter amount you would spend ($) (only enter a single amount, not a range).’’ Participants typed their answer and pressed the ‘‘Accept’’ button to move onto the next question or trial. The time taken between pressing the ‘‘Accept’’ button for the first question and pressing the ‘‘Accept’’ button for the second question was recorded as a measure of response time for the price estimation. In the credit card present condition, a picture of four credit card logos was shown on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, whereas in the credit card absent condition, the bottom left-hand corner of the screen was blank. The results showed that price evaluations were significantly lower for participants who viewed the items in the presence of the credit card symbols compared to those who viewed the items without the symbols, and this effect emerged regardless of the method of item presentation. These effects were taken as supporting the premise that New Zealand students’ negative conditioning history with credit card stimuli (i.e., credit cards being associated more with debt than spending) led to a negative credit card effect, whereby credit cards discouraged rather than encouraged spending, and that the absence (Hunt et al., 1990; Shimp and Moody, 2000) or presence (McCall and Belmont, 1996; McCall et al., 2004; Monger and Feinberg, 1997; Prelec and Simester, 2001; Raghubir and Srivastava, 2008) of a positive credit card effect in earlier studies depended on past associations with credit card stimuli. Moreover, contrary to Feinberg’s (1986) results, the mean response time for the items was not consistently affected by the presence or absence of the credit card stimuli. Analysis of the questionnaire data on credit card use indicated that 67% of the participants reported owning or having owned a credit card, and there was little effect of credit card use experience on price estimation when the credit card stimulus was absent. However, a notable effect existed when the credit card was present in that participants who did not have credit card use experience perceived the items as having lower value. As explained by the authors, this might be because in the absence of any personal experience where credit cards were linked to consumption, the negative connotations associated with credit cards in the media gave rise to negative associations with credit cards. This negative association, nevertheless, decreased with personal experience.

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Sixteen year 4 students participated in Experiment 2. The procedure of Experiment 2 was identical to task B in Experiment 1 except two changes were made to the product items. Overall, the results of Experiment 2 replicated those of Experiment 1. Lie et al.’s (2010) results might be viewed as supporting a classical conditioning explanation of the credit card effect. In New Zealand, credit cards have acquired negative valence through repeated pairings with negative emotions portrayed in media reports and advertising. Therefore, credit card logos might act as second-order CSs, with cautious spending as the conditioned response (Lie et al., 2010). However, their observed classical conditioning effects deserve some cautions. First, same as Feinberg (1986), the study used a single simultaneous CS–US pairing, lowering the CS’s predictiveness of the US. Second was the latent inhibition – a credit card (serving as an US) is commonly seen in our daily life before pairing with the product items (serving as CSs) in the experiments, resulting in little classical conditioning. In addition, participants without credit card use experience should not be included in the study. Alternatively, credit card use experience should be manipulated as another independent variable. The reason for the result that price evaluations were significantly lower for participants who viewed the items in the presence of the credit card symbols compared to those who viewed the items without the symbols may be that the credit card present condition happened to consist mainly of participants without credit card use experience (because it was found that these individuals perceived the items as having lower value). 3.2. Studies using familiar CSs, familiar USs, and multiple CS–US pairings Bierley et al. (1985), in an attempt to replicate Gorn’s (1982) findings, used colored geometric figures as CSs and music from the movie ‘‘Star Wars’’ as an US. Student participants were divided into four groups: (i) a ‘‘red-predictive’’ group, in which red CSs were consistently followed by music, blue CSs were followed by music on half of their presentations, and yellow CSs were never followed by music; (ii) a ‘‘yellow-predictive’’ group; (iii) a random control group; and (iv) a CS-only control group. Participants were exposed to 84 trials (28 trials per color). Bierley et al. (1985) found that when the color of the CSs was held constant, the CSs that were followed by music were preferred to the ones that were not. The effect of conditioning revealed by the group-by-color interaction was complicated. A non-significant increase in preference for the predictive CSs (excitatory conditioned response) and a significant or non-significant decrease in preference for the CSs combined to predict the absence of music (inhibitory conditioned response). The group-by-color interaction was also significant for the participants classified as unaware of the study’s purpose or of the relation between the figures and the music, thus ruling out the argument that awareness was necessary for classical conditioning. Bierley et al.’s (1985) findings, nevertheless, may not be regarded as promising supports for classical conditioning. First, comparing both experimental groups with the random control group, the increase in preference for the predictive CSs was not significant. Besides, the inhibitory conditioned response was significant only in the yellow-predictive group. Second, like Gorn’s (1982) study, the chance for classical conditioning to occur was likely to be minimal due to the use of a familiar CS and a familiar US. This US was not pretested to ensure that participants would really like it. Although it was required that participants in the experiment like the music from ‘‘Star Wars,’’ there was no guarantee that participants would conform to this requirement. Third, the cover story asking participants to try to predict music might have led to demand artifacts, which could not be detected by the post hoc

analysis if participants had poor verbalization or were not attentive enough to describe fully what they thought. In Experiment 1 of Janiszewski and Warlop (1993), 54 undergraduates entered a laboratory one at a time to watch soft drink commercials and received either forward conditioning or random conditioning. The original commercials were two 30-s TV commercials: a Mountain Dew commercial featuring white-water surfing and a Canada Dry commercial featuring scenes of couples having fun. For each commercial, the 18 segments arranged to catchy jingles were divided into three groups: six segments showing the product only (serving as CSs), six segments being interesting or fun (serving as USs), and six segments of the product being consumed (serving as fillers). Two experimental commercials were made from each original. The forward conditioning version of each commercial consisted of six trials, with each trial composed of a product segment (CS), followed by an entertaining segment (US), and then by a product-consumption segment (filler). The random conditioning version of the commercials consisted of a random order of the six trials representing the six possible orders of the CS, the US, and the filler segments. The experimental design was a between-subjects manipulation of the conditioning procedure (forward, random) with a stimulus replication. One treatment group received 18 forward conditioning trials for Mountain Dew and 18 random conditioning trials for Canada Dry, while the other treatment group received 18 forward conditioning trials for Canada Dry and 18 random conditioning trials for Mountain Dew. The conditioning trials for both groups were achieved by embedding three presentations of forward and random conditioning commercials within a sequence of six filler ads, all of which were moderately known brands to allow observation of a conditioning influence. The experimental commercials were presented as part of a series of commercials for eight different soft drinks. Each of the two experimental tapes consisted of 12 commercials, each of which was separated by 5 s of black space. The results showed that participants receiving forward conditioning presentation of the Mountain Dew commercial looked at the Mountain Dew container earlier than those presented with the random version of the commercial, while participants receiving forward conditioning presentation of the Canada Dry commercial looked at the Canada Dry container sooner than those viewing the random version. Neither the different preference between the forward conditioning and the random conditioning versions of each commercial nor contingency awareness of the CS–US pairing (participants had little awareness of the CS–US contingency) appeared to account for the results. The classical conditioning effects observed in Janiszewski and Warlop (1993) were subject to some limitations. First was the US pre-exposure effect – conditioning will not occur if people have been preexposed to the US alone (white-water surfing scenes for the Mountain Dew commercial and couples having fun scenes for the Canada Dry commercial). Second was the blocking effect, which refers to the situation when prior experience that CS1 is predictive of an US blocks conditioning from happening to CS2 and implies that a familiar US should not be used. In addition, participants were exposed to so many commercials, leading to fatigue and boredom. Third, using well-known brands (Mountain Dew and Canada Dry) as CSs posed the latent inhibition effect, that is, a situation where the CS has been seen alone several times before it is paired with the US, resulting in little classical conditioning. Lastly, it was not clear whether participants’ pre-existing familiarity with the experimental brand was measured. It could be that participants in the forward conditioning happened to be more familiar with the experimental brand, so they looked at the brand sooner than those in the random conditioning.

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In the affective conditioning experiment in Groenland and Schoormans (1994), two conditions (an experimental condition and a random control condition) were manipulated, with music serving as an affect-producing US and a green pen serving as a CS. Both conditions were split into two groups: one being presented pleasant music (a fragment of popular classical instrumental music pretested to be pleasant) whereas the other being presented unpleasant music (a fragment of hard rock instrumental music pretested to be unpleasant). In the experimental condition, the presentation sequence consisted of seven trials. Each trial started with a 10-s presentation of a new slide, showing the pen in different user contexts. Four seconds after the slide presentation began, the music was played for one minute. The time interval between the CS and the US was thus similar to that used in other classical conditioning studies. Between trials was a break for 15 s with neither music nor slides being presented. In the random control condition, the same procedure applied except both the slide and the music presentation were randomly scheduled within the total presentation period so that no sequential association between the CS and the US could be established. The total music presentation time was seven minutes for both the experimental and the control conditions. The results of the affective conditioning experiment showed a more positive evaluation of the pen in the positive music experimental condition than in the negative music experimental condition, whereas in the control condition, no such difference was found, indicating that affective conditioning occurred at the level of product evaluation. For both the experimental and the control conditions, the proportion of participants choosing the expected color of pen (green in the positive conditions, blue in the negative conditions) was compared to the proportion of the relevant personal favorite color (green in the positive conditions, blue in the negative conditions). The results showed that in the experimental condition, participants chose the expected pen color significantly more often, while in the control condition, they did not, and this could be interpreted that affective conditioning occurred at the level of product choice. Groenland and Schoormans (1994) utilized a random control condition. However, the experiment used a familiar CS (a green pen) and a familiar US (a fragment of popular classical instrumental music). Both aspects hinder classical conditioning. Barnes-Holmes et al. (2000) exposed 38 undergraduates to a series of third-order conditioning experiments. In Experiment 1, each participant was trained, tested, and did the rating task individually. In the training stage, each participant was trained on four matching-to-sample tasks of the following types: CANCER ? VEK; VEK ? BRAND X; HOLIDAYS ? ZID; and ZID ? BRAND Y. Participants were seated at a computer to see a text on the screen, which instructed them to press Z if they chose the comparison on the left of the screen and to press M if they chose the comparison on the right. After participants pressed the space bar, one of the four matching-to-sample tasks appeared. In effect, a sample stimulus (e.g., CANCER) was presented for 2 s and then the screen cleared for 0.5 s before two comparison stimuli (i.e., VEK and ZID) were shown. If the choice was correct, the screen cleared and the word ‘‘CORRECT’’ appeared on the screen for 1.5 s, accompanied by a highpitched tone. On the other hand, if the choice was incorrect, the screen cleared and the word ‘‘WRONG’’ appeared on the screen for 1.5 s, accompanied by a low-pitched tone. A 2-s inter-trial interval was presented following the feedback, during which the screen remained blank and no sounds were emitted. The four matching-to-sample tasks were presented in this way in a quasirandom order until participants gave 24 correct responses consecutively.

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The testing stage followed the training stage immediately with 20 matching-to-sample trials, in which each of the four equivalence tasks were presented five times in a quasi-random order, and no feedback was given after any test trial. Participants who matched in accordance with the equivalence relations on at least 17 of these 20 trials were deemed to have passed the test. The rating stage took place right after the testing stage. A participant was seated at a table, on which a tray contained the following: (i) on the left side of the tray were a glass and a 1.25-l bottle of cola labeled BRAND X, and (ii) on the right side of the tray were a glass and an identical 1.25-l bottle of cola labeled BRAND Y. Participants tasted and then rated the pleasantness of both colas. The order of tasting across participants was counterbalanced. The result showed that participants who passed the equivalence test rated the cola that had a label in an equivalence class with the word holidays (i.e., holidays-cola) higher than the cola that had a label in an equivalence class with the word cancer (i.e., cancercola), and no significant difference emerged between ratings of the two colas for participants who failed the equivalence test. This indicated that the stimulus equivalence procedure was an effective method by which preference functions could be transferred to a third order. Experiment 2 tested whether the transfer of function to a third order in Experiment 1 was facilitated by the subsequent test for equivalence, during which the stimuli were presented contiguously on the screen. The procedure was identical to that used in Experiment 1, excluding the equivalence testing stage. The result showed a significant preference for the holidays-cola over the cancer-cola, suggesting the test for equivalence in Experiment 1 was not necessary for the transfer of preference function to a third order by means of a stimulus equivalence procedure. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2, but several control measures and procedures were included in order to determine whether the conditional discrimination training clearly influenced the pleasantness ratings of the colas. First, participants rated the two colas before the conditional discrimination. Second, before and after the experiment, participants rated the words ‘‘cancer’’ and ‘‘holidays’’ as emotionally negative or positive, so that these ratings could be compared to the pleasantness ratings obtained for the colas. Third, after participants had gone through the conditional discrimination training and pleasantness ratings, they were exposed again to the training and testing procedure except the labels Brand X and Brand Y were swapped within the training. Overall, the results of Experiment 3 provided strong evidence that the conditional discrimination training functioned as a powerful determinant of participants’ preference ratings. The classical conditioning effect found in Barnes-Holmes et al.’s (2000) called for some cautions. First, participants may have realized what the research was attempting to achieve, and the preference ratings simply reflected their tendencies to please the experimenter. In particular, the study’s training phase was in effect ensuring that participants were aware of the pairings. The pretest– posttest measures, as well as the second training that swapped the brands, in Experiment 3 would have clued participants as to what the experimenter wanted. Second, both colas were presented simultaneously on the tray and thus the presence of one brand may have affected participants’ ratings of the other brand. That is, the influence of the context stimuli could not be ignored. Finally, the US pre-exposure effect applied – conditioning will not occur if people have been preexposed to the US alone. In a study designed to demonstrate that classical conditioning effects on attitude can happen without demand characteristics or contingency awareness, Olson and Fazio (2001) found that attitudes could develop through implicit covariation detection in a classical conditioning paradigm. In two experiments purportedly

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about video surveillance and vigilance, undergraduate females viewed several hundred randomly presented words and images interspersed with critical simultaneous pairings of valenced USs [either (i) positive words such as excellent, awesome and images such as puppies, hot fudge sundaes or (ii) negative words such as terrible, awful and images such as a cockroach, a man wielding a knife] with a CS (a colored picture of Pokémon cartoon character). The findings indicated that in a covariation estimation task involving the stimuli presented in the conditioning phase, participants revealed no explicit memory for the pairings, suggesting no CS–US contingency awareness. In a surprise evaluation task, the CS paired with positive items was evaluated more positively than the one paired with negative items. This attitudinal conditioning effect was observed when using an explicit measure in both experiments and when using Greenwald et al.’s (1998) Implicit Association Test, which was less susceptible to demand artifacts than explicit measures, in Experiment 2. The limitations of Olson and Fazio (2001) were twofold. First, the study utilized a simultaneous conditioning procedure as used in Baker (1999), Gorn (1982), Allen and Madden (1985), Rozin et al. (1998), and Tom (1995), instead of having the CS preceding the US as suggested by McSweeney and Bierley (1984) and Groenland and Schoormans (1994). Second, the CS (Pokémon cartoon character) might not be novel as intended since this cartoon is quite well-known. Distinguishing between implicit attitudes [which are automatic and based on associations in memory, typically measured by Greenwald et al.’s, 1998 Implicit Association Test] and explicit attitudes (which are deliberative and based on self-reported measures), Gibson (2008) extended the studies of Shimp et al. (1991) and Cacioppo et al. (1992), which will be discussed later. Based on the result of a pretest pertaining to an explicit measure of preference for soft drinks, 56 undergraduate students participated in Experiment 1, which employed three conditions: a strong preference for Coke, a strong preference for Pepsi, and an approximately equal preference for each. Participants were told that the experiment focused on people’s vigilance and attention to different brand images. They were exposed to a large number of words and images on a computer screen over five blocks, each of which consisted of 86 trials presented for 1.5 s each. Within each block, 10 of the 86 images were of the target brand, and these were randomly interspersed throughout the block of trials. The 76 remaining trials within each block included other neutral images and words, blank screens, and also four images of Coke and four images of Pepsi (the conditioning trials). Thus, over the five blocks of trials, participants saw a total of 20 images of Coke and 20 images of Pepsi, both of which were evenly spaced across the block of trials and always alternated in order. In the ‘‘Pepsi-positive’’ conditioning condition, Coke images were always paired with negative photographic stimuli and words, whereas Pepsi images were always paired with positive ones. In contrast, in the ‘‘Coke-positive’’ condition, Coke images were always paired with positive photographic and verbal stimuli, whereas Pepsi images were always paired with negative ones. The paired positive or negative stimuli were presented on the same screen as the image of Coke or Pepsi, rendering this a simultaneous conditioning procedure. Within each level of this conditioning, the contrasting brand was always paired with negative images and words. In the conditioning trials, the Coke and Pepsi images were placed on either the right or the left side of the screen, against a black background, with the USs placed adjacent to them on the other side of the screen. In addition, the brand images were labeled with the word Coke or Pepsi underneath the image. Each brand appeared equally often on the right or the left of the screen. The results of Experiment 1 showed a significant correlation between implicit and explicit brand attitudes across the whole

sample and a significant interaction effect between the pretest attitude toward the brands and the conditioning procedure on implicit attitudes. That is, the conditioning procedure had no effect on implicit attitudes for either the Coke-lover or Pepsi-lover groups (This result will be presented again in Section 4). On the contrary, neutral participants showed a significant effect of conditioning such that those in the Coke-positive condition showed more-favorable implicit attitudes toward Coke, while those in the Pepsi-positive condition exhibited more-favorable implicit attitudes toward Pepsi. As for explicit brand attitudes, participants who reported strong pretest preferences continued with those preferences and those who were neutral on the pretest remained neutral after the conditioning procedure. Furthermore, there was no significant main effect for the conditioning procedure and no interaction between conditioning and pretest preference (This result will be presented again in the Section 4). Therefore, Experiment 1 revealed that implicit attitudes (but not explicit attitudes) for mature brands could be altered by evaluative conditioning, and this effect occurred only for participants whose attitude toward the brand was initially neutral. In addition, contingency awareness was not necessary to change implicit brand attitudes. The results of Experiment 2 replicated and extended the results of Experiment 1, indicating that brand choice was congruent with conditioning but only under cognitive load, and the implicit brand attitudes predicted brand choice but only under cognitive load. The classical conditioning effects on implicit memory for people with neutral attitude toward the CS found in Gibson’s (2008) experiment had a few reservations. First was the US pre-exposure effect – conditioning will not occur if people have been preexposed to the US alone. Second is the blocking effect, which indicates that familiar USs should not be used. Third is the latent inhibition – the CS is presented alone several times before pairing with the US, resulting in little classical conditioning. 3.3. Studies using familiar CSs, unfamiliar USs, and multiple CS–US pairings Stuart et al. (1987) conducted experiments with students under ideal conditions for classical conditioning to occur. Experiment 1 used a neutral fictitious brand as a CS and pleasant pictures as USs. The design was a 4 (levels of conditioning trials: 1, 3, 10, 20 trials) by 2 (experimental group versus random control group) ANOVA. The results showed that the experimental groups had significantly more-positive attitudes toward the brand than the corresponding control groups. Experiment 2 utilized 10-trial and one-trial levels with five conditions: (i) a latent inhibition group preexposed to the CS alone several times before the CS–US pairings, (ii) a conditioning control group, (iii) a random control group, (iv) a CS-only control group, and (v) a latent inhibition/random control group. The results showed that the conditioned response in the latent inhibition groups was significantly more positive than that in the random control groups but was less positive than that of the conditioning groups, whose responses were more positive than the other control groups. In line with Spetch et al. (1981), Experiment 3 showed that backward conditioning did produce a conditioning effect, relative to the control group, though the effect was significantly less than that of the forward conditioning group. Experiment 4, which examined forward and backward conditioning procedures, confirmed that all three forward conditioning procedures resulted in similar conditioning effects, which were significantly greater than that of the control group, and replicated the results of Experiment 3. Stuart et al. (1987) utilized a careful design and attempted to reduce hypothesis guessing by using filler materials. The post hoc

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analysis, however, revealed that half of the participants were aware of the CS–US contingency, and this contingency awareness was a significant predictor of participants’ attitudes. This is in line with many studies, which found that contingency awareness acted as a causal mediator in conditioning (Allen and Janiszewski, 1989; Baer and Fuhrer, 1982; Biferno and Dawson, 1977; Dawson, 1973; Perruchet, 1985; Rescorla, 1988; Shimp et al., 1991). In addition, because they did not employ an elaborate demand artifact assessment, they admitted that this possibility could not be rejected. In another study, Walther and Grigoriadis (2004) investigated the impact of mood on the acquisition of affective attitudes through a 2 (mood: positive versus negative) between-subjects by 2 (conditioning: appetitive versus aversive) within-subjects design. Forty-four students were seated individually in front of a computer screen. The conditioning procedure contained three sequential phases guided by a computer program: the baseline phase, the conditioning phase, and the test phase. Participants put on headphones and started a program of auditory instructions, which informed them that the study was concerned with spontaneous feelings people experienced towards other objects and individuals. Participants then judged different types of stimuli randomly selected by a computer program. In all conditions, 105 black-and-white pictures of white male faces intermixed with 67 pictures of all kinds of shoes (without brands) selected from German magazines and the Internet were displayed for 3 s each in a full frontal view in the center of the screen. After 3 s, participants evaluated the stimulus. Two negative USs, two positive USs, and eight moderately rated CSs were selected from this baseline evaluation. Next was the mood manipulation. Participants were seated in front of a television set. In the happy-mood condition, participants viewed two short films: one containing scenes from the movie ‘‘Shrek’’ and the other from ‘‘The Little Bear.’’ Those in the sadmood condition were shown two films: one about child abuse and the other about the last day of a doomed man. The films lasted about 10 min in both conditions. After the film presentation, participants rated their mood on a 9-point scale embedded in several neutral questions concerning the film. The conditioning phase followed the mood manipulation. Pictures of neutral shoes (CSs) were paired with liked or disliked faces (USs). Two sets of stimuli were used, each of which consisted of a CS-positive US pair, a CS-negative US pair, and a control CS–CS pair. Identical stimuli were presented in each pair. Both sets were presented five times, intermixed with each other and with two additional neutral CS–CS distracter pairs. In keeping with previous studies, each picture was shown for 1 s with a trace interval (i.e., the interval between the end of the first stimulus and the beginning of the second stimulus of a pair) of 1 s and an inter-trial interval of 4 s. The conditioning phase was instantly followed by the test phase, which employed the same procedure as in the baseline. A second mood check was conducted immediately after the test phase, and then the recognition test appeared on the screen. Participants saw each CS in its original size on the left side of the screen and with four smaller pictures on the right. The instructions above the pictures asked participants to select the small picture that frequently followed the large picture. Participants had the choice between the correct US, a stimulus with the same valence as the correct US, a stimulus that occurred with the same frequency as the correct US, and a stimulus of medium valence selected from the baseline. Once they made their choice, the next CS recognition test appeared on the screen. Finally, participants answered an open-ended questionnaire to check their demand awareness and verbal knowledge of the contingencies. After completing the questionnaire, participants filled out a final mood check. The procedure lasted for about 45 min.

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The results revealed an interaction between the valence of the US (liked versus disliked faces) and participants’ mood. That is, participants in a sad mood were more susceptible to the negative conditioning procedure than were those in a happy mood. In addition, contingency awareness influenced the formation of consumer attitudes. Walther and Grigoriadis (2004) used a very tedious conditioning procedure and an extensive set of open-ended questions to check contingency and demand awareness. After about 40 min of going through the experiment and several rounds of answering many questions, it was doubtful how participants could answer the questions accurately, and they might have been too exhausted to elaborate on the awareness-checking questionnaire. 3.4. Studies using unfamiliar CSs, familiar USs, and multiple CS–US pairings Additional evidence in favor of classical conditioning was from Allen and Janiszewski (1989). Experiment 1 assessed the role of contingency awareness versus demand awareness by using five neutral Norwegian words as CSs and positive evaluative phrases for participants’ performance as USs. The five words had different degrees in predicting the US. The experimental group was found to have significantly more-favorable evaluation for the words predicting the US in both the between-group test and the withingroup test. Experiment 2 attempted to strengthen the conditioning procedure by increasing inter-trial intervals, to heighten contingency but not demand awareness, and to manipulate demand awareness. The results showed that in the extended inter-trial interval group, there were no effects on word evaluations or brand name ratings. In the contingency-aware group, there was an effect on word evaluations only. In the demand-aware condition, the effects on both variables were significant. Taken together, the two experiments did not support the conditioning-without-awareness position (Kassarjian, 1986; MacKenzie et al., 1986; Preston, 1982; Staats and Staats, 1959). In Shimp et al. (1991), the CS in each of the 21 forwardconditioning experiments was one of the four unknown (Cragmont, Elf, My-te-Fine, and Target), two moderately known (RC and Shasta), or two well-known (Coke and Pepsi) cola brands. The US was a composite of four attractive water scenes used in Stuart et al.’s (1987) study (a mountain waterfall, a sunset over water, a boat mast against the sky, and a lavender-hued island). The filler context for the conditioning trials included three unknown or known brands. Specifically, when an unknown brand served as the CS in the context of other unknown colas, the filler items comprised the three remaining unknown brands. When an unknown brand was conditioned in a known context, Coke, Pepsi, and either RC or Shasta were used as fillers. When a moderately known brand was conditioned in the context of known brands, the filler brands included Coke, Pepsi, and the remaining moderately known brand. When a well-known brand was conditioned in the context of known brands, the filler brands were composed of RC, Shasta, and the remaining well-known brand. When a moderately or well-known brand was conditioned in the context of unknown brands, any three of the four unknown brands served as fillers. Each experiment involved a conditioning group and a random control group. The conditioning group received 20 conditioning trials, in which the CS always preceded an US scene, and 60 nonconditioning trials, in which non-CS brands of cola were paired with 12 pictures pretested as being neutral, e.g., a license plate, weeds growing in a pond, and unpainted boards. All conditioning and non-conditioning trials involved displaying a cola brand on a screen for 7.5 s followed by a 7.5-s slide of either a positively valenced slide in the case of the conditioning trials or a neutral slide in

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the case of non-conditioning trials. All 80 15-s pairings ended with a 2-s dark-screen pause. Each of the four US water scenes followed the CS five times, with the various water scenes randomly distributed among the 20 conditioning trials. To minimize temporal conditioning, the 20 conditioning trials were interspersed among the 60 non-conditioning trials. The time between the end of a conditioning trial and the onset of the next trial (i.e., the inter-trial interval) ranged from 2 to 102 s with an average of 54 s. The random control group received the same number of presentations of the CS and the US and the same number of presentations of the filler brands and scenes, but all were randomly assigned with respect to each other. The 23-min slide presentation was interrupted twice after the first and the second portion of the three approximately equal portions for participants to answer questions about attitudes toward filler brands. The 21 experiments ranged in size from 51–83 students, with most experiments having approximately 30 participants each in the conditioning and random control groups. The experimental sessions consisted of 2–10 students, with most sessions having 4–7. The results showed that the conditioning groups in 11 of the 21 experiments exhibited significantly more positive attitudes toward the CS brands than the random control groups (The non-significant results will be discussed again in Section 4). Of the 11 instances of statistical significance, seven employed unknown brands, three used moderately known brands, and one used well-known brands as CSs. Attitude change was most apparent when participants noticed the contingency between the CS and the US. In summary, evaluative conditioning could change attitudes for novel brands but not for mature brands (like Coke and Pepsi). One-hundred and sixty-nine participants were recruited under the guise of evaluating audiocassette tapes of business programs in Blair and Shimp’s (1992) experiment, which involved two phases: a preconditioning phase followed by a conditioning phase. In the preconditioning phase, participants returned to the research site many times in winter (unpleasant experience) and each time listened to different audiotaped business books introduced and concluded with the same music to be used as the US later. After the preconditioning phase, about half of the participants formed two conditioning groups, namely, the non-US-preexposureconditioning group (the conditioning group that was not preexposed to the US) and the US-preexposure-conditioning group (the conditioning group that was preexposed to the US), while the remainder constituted two control groups. The CS was a neutral fictitious brand name of sportswear ‘‘Garra’’ and the US was the ‘‘Thanksgiving’’ music positively evaluated and relatively unfamiliar to the participants. The entire presentation in the conditioning procedure included a shirt slide for 4 s, a word slide for 4 s (including the CS and three filler Portuguese names), and then a blank screen while music was played for 25 s. This sequence was repeated 40 times. The 25-min presentation was designed such that 10 conditioning trials were embedded among the pairings of filler names and music snippets. In the conditioning groups, each word slide was followed by a 25-s snippet of the US music, and the US always followed the CS but never any of the other names. Participants in the control groups received an identical number of exposures to the CS, US, and filler materials as those in the conditioning groups; however, the CS was never immediately followed by the US in the control groups but instead was always followed by one of the three filler snippets. The results showed no significant difference between the nonUS-preexposed conditioning group and its control. In other words, the US was not salient enough to produce positive attitudinal conditioning for participants in the non-preexposed group (this null result will be presented again in Section 4). Participants in the USpreexposed conditioning group evaluated the CS less positively than

those in the control group did. Besides, the non-US-preexposed conditioning group held significantly more-favorable attitudes toward the CS than the US-preexposed conditioning group. In summary, the results indicated that the US induced negative attitudinal conditioning toward the name Garra in participants who had been preexposed to the US in an unpleasant context. Blair and Shimp’s (1992) study used proper control procedure but faced some limitations. In the US-preexposed group, the supposedly pleasant thanksgiving music in the preconditioning phase was in effect a CS being paired with unpleasant winter experience until this music was later used as a negative US. However, this preconditioning procedure gave rise to the blocking effect – the US should have no previous associations with the CS or certain experience before. It would have been better if the negative US was manipulated via the use of music pretested to be unfamiliar and unpleasant to people similar to the target respondents. Second was the Garcia effect – not any stimulus can be used as a CS or an US, and the CS and the US should logically belong together in a classical conditioning experiment. Thanksgiving music (the US) and sportswear (the CS) might not logically/emotionally belong together. The negative classical conditioning effect found might have been caused by some other extraneous factors. In Experiment 1 of Kim et al. (1996), 66 undergraduate students were administered in groups of 2–5 persons and randomly assigned to one of the three conditions, namely, forward conditioning, backward conditioning, and control. A picture of a plain white pizza box inscribed with the logo of a fictitious brand ‘‘L Pizza House’’ served as a CS, while a race car, which was pretested to provoke neutral affective response and convey implicit meaning that might be used in forming beliefs about the brand, served as an US. Meanwhile, 60 pictures in the series of 80 images for three other fictitious brands were used to detract attention from the focal CS–US pairings and thus decrease hypothesis guessing. Participants in each condition watched a series of 80 visual images displayed on a television. In the forward conditioning group, they were exposed to ten trials, each of which consisted of a 7.5-s presentation of the CS followed by a 7.5-s presentation of the US. In the backward conditioning group, all the ten presentations of the CS were preceded by the US. Participants in the control group were exposed to the same number of presentations of the CS and the US and the same 60 filler images as those in the treatment groups. However, the sequence of images was randomly scrambled, and the CS and the US never appeared contiguously. The results showed that the forward conditioning group had more-favorable attitudes toward the brand than the control and the backward conditioning groups, which did not differ from each other. Participants who experienced forward (versus backward) conditioning trials demonstrated higher levels of contingency awareness, and those who were aware (versus unaware) of the contingency between the CS and the US exhibited more-positive beliefs about the target attribute and more-favorable brand attitudes. Furthermore, the series of regression analyses showed that the conditioning procedure accounted for significant variation in beliefs about the target attribute and brand attitudes. Lastly, beliefs about the target attribute mediated the effect of the conditioning procedure on participants’ brand attitudes. Experiment 2, which used a different CS (Brand L facial tissue) and USs (pictures of a single kitten and two kittens, respectively) from Experiment 1, confirmed the results in Experiment 1. Together, the results revealed that brand attitudes could be conditioned using both attractive images that induced direct affect transfer and descriptive visual images that elicited inferential belief formation (i.e., cognitive mechanisms). Kim et al. (1996) used filler brands to reduce hypothesis guessing and a control group for comparison. However, the obtained classical conditioning effects might be subject to some reservations.

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The USs in both experiments (a race car in Experiment 1 and kittens in Experiment 2) are typically encountered alone in people’s daily life or television. According to the US pre-exposure effect, conditioning will not occur if people have been preexposed to the US alone. Demand artifacts, despite the use of filler brands, might have given rise to the observed classical conditioning effects. Kim et al. (1998) exposed 36 undergraduates to a classical conditioning experiment, in which the fictitious restaurant ‘‘L Pizza House’’ served as a CS and a kitten picture, which was chosen after extensive pretesting that the picture was neutral and bore no belief about the CS, served as an US. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions (conditioning or control). In the conditioning group, participants viewed the CS for 5 s, followed by a 5-s presentation of the US. After 10 repetitions of the CS–US pairing, 1 s of ‘‘down time’’ occurred, followed by a filler CS and a neutrally affective US in order to detract participants’ attention from the focal CS– US pairing. In the control condition, participants were exposed to the same stimuli as in the conditioning group; however, the order of stimuli presentation was randomized and there was no systematic pairing of the CS and the US. The result of Experiment 1 showed that attitude toward the product in the conditioning group was significantly morefavorable than that in the control group, indicating that the conditioning procedure influenced attitude toward the product. The differences in the mean values between the conditioning and the control groups for all product beliefs were not significant, showing that the US (i.e., a kitten picture) did not provoke any beliefs that could be associated with the CS (i.e., L Pizza House). In addition, the mean values for affect toward the kitten in the conditioning and the control groups were not significantly different, suggesting that participants’ positive affect toward the kitten was present in both conditions. The design of Kim et al.’s (1998) study was rather simple with two groups only. The limitation in their study was similar to Kim et al.’s (1996), namely, the US pre-exposure effect, which suggests that conditioning will not occur if consumers have been preexposed to the US alone. A kitten is frequently encountered in daily lives. Second, the Garcia effect stipulates that the US and the CS should be matched properly. It was not clear whether a kitten is an appropriate match as an US for a pizza house. In Experiment 1 of Grossman and Till (1998), groups of 12–25 participants were exposed to a fictitious brand of mouthwash (Garra), which served as a CS, and three highly favorable scenes (a tropical scene with a boat, a picture of railroad tracks leading to a snow-covered mountain, and a nature scene with a panda), which were selected as USs based on a pretest. Nine neutral pictures were paired with each of the three filler brands, which were included to disguise the nature of the study and prevent hypothesis guessing. The treatment and control groups were exposed the same number of times to both the US and the CS; however, only the treatment group was exposed to the CS–US contingency pairing. That is, the control group saw a random sequence of pictures, whereas the treatment group saw each of the following stimuli for 4 s in the following order: the CS, the US, the CS superimposed on the US, and a blank screen. After the experiment, participants completed an immediate attitude measure, a one-week delayed measure with the same questionnaire as the immediate one, and a three-week delayed measure with identical questions as the former ones but in different order, respectively. The results showed that the treatment participants’ mean attitude toward the CS was much higher than that of the control participants. Moreover, the significant difference of mean attitude toward the CS between the treatment and the control conditions persisted over time as reflected in the one-week and the threeweek delayed conditions, indicating that participants exposed to a classical conditioning procedure in which a CS was systematically

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paired with a positive US maintained a favorable attitude toward the CS over time. The result in Experiment 2 also showed that conditioned attitudes toward the brand did persist over time. The classical conditioning effects obtained in Grossman and Till (1998) were subject to the same reservations as in Kim et al. (1996). Priluck and Till (2004) conducted a 2 (conditioning group versus control group) by 2 (high versus low involvement) betweensubjects factorial-design experiment with 195 undergraduate students. Similar to Grossman and Till (1998), the CS was a picture of a fictitious brand of mouthwash (Garra) that had been previously pretested to be affectively neutral and not to evoke unusual associations. The USs were three pleasant visual scenes: a picture of a boat in tropical waters, a picture of railroad tracks leading to a snow-covered mountain, and a picture of a nature scene with a panda. Each of these pictures had been pretested to be favorable to the participants. Participants were exposed to a positive conditioning procedure in which the test brand was paired with favorable stimuli either 1 or 15 times. Participants in both the conditioning treatment and the conditioning control groups were exposed to a slide presentation in which the stimuli appeared interspersed among filler pictures. While the conditioning control group saw a random sequence of pictures, the conditioning treatment group was exposed to each of the following stimuli for 4 s in the following order: the CS, the US, the CS superimposed on the US, and a blank screen. High involvement was achieved by written instructions asking participants to pay careful attention to the slide presentation with a chance to win $25 if they answered questions about the presentation correctly. In contrast, low involvement was attained by asking participants to consider filler pictures. The results of Experiment 1 showed that the mean attitude toward the CS among contingency-aware participants in the conditioning treatment was significantly higher than that among contingency-unaware participants. The three-step regression procedure supported the hypothesis that contingency awareness mediated the relationship between classical conditioning procedures and attitudes toward the CS because: (i) participants in the conditioning treatment were more likely to be aware of the CS–US contingency than those in the conditioning control; (ii) attitude toward the brand was significant when regressed on conditioning, showing a basic conditioning effect; and (iii) when attitude toward the brand was regressed on awareness and conditioning, the effect of conditioning decreased. Finally, individuals exposed to the CS– US pairing who were both highly involved and high in need for cognition were more aware of the CS–US contingency relationship than were those who were not highly involved and not high in need for cognition. Experiment 2 revealed further that individuals exposed to the CS–US pairing who were both highly involved and high in need for cognition developed more-favorable attitudes toward the CS than those who were not highly involved and not high in need for cognition. Participants exposed to the CS–US pairing who were highly involved or high in need for cognition developed stronger beliefs than those who were not highly involved or low in need for cognition. In addition, contingency awareness mediated more strongly for beliefs than for affect transfer in the relationship between classical conditioning and attitude toward the CS. The findings in Experiment 2 were consistent with those of Kim et al. (1996, 1998), challenging the traditional view of classical conditioning as automatic, non-cognitive learning. However, the classical conditioning effect observed in Priluck and Till’s experiments are subject to the same reservations as in Grossman and Till (1998) and Kim et al. (1996). Stahl et al.’s (2009) results supported the critical role of contingency awareness in evaluative conditioning, albeit valence awareness, not identity awareness of the US. Sixteen university students

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participated in Experiment 1, in which two sets (set A and set B) of five neutrally evaluated, pronounceable nonwords were used as CSs, and two sets of 25 pictures from the International Affective Pictures System were used as USs. The design was 2 (US valence: positive versus negative) by 2 (CS set: set A and set B, both are positive) with repeated measures on the US valence factor. During the experiment, five USs were randomly assigned to each CS for each participant anew, creating 50 different CS–US pairs. The experiment was conducted in individual computer-controlled sessions in three phases: conditioning, evaluative ratings, and awareness check. In the conditioning phase, participants watched 100 CS–US pairings (50 different CS–US pairs, each presented twice). The CS and US simultaneously appeared on the computer screen for 2,000 ms with the US picture in the upper half of the screen and the CS in the lower half. The presentation order was randomized anew for each participant. After the conditioning phase, participants evaluated each nonword CS on a scale ranging from 1 (very unpleasant) to 8 (very pleasant). Then, valence and identity awareness was assessed for each CS–US pair. Participants indicated for each CS whether they thought it had been paired with pleasant or unpleasant USs. Meanwhile, awareness for the US identity was probed through recognition tests five times for each CS, once for each of the five USs with which it was paired. The results showed that for 15 out of 16 participants, valenceaware CSs were obtained; for these valence-aware CSs, a significant evaluative conditioning effect was observed across participants. For 11 out of 16 participants, valence-unaware CSs were obtained, and evaluative conditioning was absent when only valence-unaware CSs were considered. Furthermore, a regression analysis revealed that identity awareness did not predict evaluative conditioning for both valence-aware and valence-unaware CSs. In contrast, valence awareness significantly predicted evaluative conditioning. Twenty-eight university students participated in Experiment 2, in which the same USs as in Experiment 1 were used. However, ten product pictures completed the set of CSs, five of which were paired with positive USs and the remainder of which were paired with negative ones. The procedures of Experiment 2 were identical to Experiment 1 with two exceptions. First, four evaluative ratings (global impression, attractiveness, pleasantness, and willingness to buy) were collected instead of only one. Second, the valence-memory test and the identity-memory test both included an additional ‘‘don’t know’’ response option. The results showed that in the US identity test, the correct response was selected in 17.3% of cases. In the valence awareness test, the correct response was selected in 57.1% of cases. For 26 participants, valence-aware CSs were present, and for these valence-aware CSs, a significant evaluative conditioning effect was observed. For 13 participants, valence-unaware CSs were present, and for these valence-unaware CSs, evaluative conditioning was absent. The same applied to valence-undecided CSs. Identity awareness did not predict evaluative ratings for valence-aware, valence-unaware, and valence-undecided CSs. Experiments 3 and 4 obtained similar results as those in the first two experiments. All of the experiments confirmed the important role of awareness (defined as recognition memory for the CS– US pairings) for the emergence of evaluative conditioning effects and supported the view that the impact of valence awareness on evaluative ratings observed across all the experiments reflected genuine valence acquisition rather than demand effects or other artifacts of the explicit evaluation process. Because the evaluative conditioning found in Stahl et al.’s (2009) research entails awareness of the CS–US contingencies, it may be viewed as classical conditioning. Some cautions apply to the obtained effects. First, the experiments required tremendous

effort from the participants, especially in the valence and identity awareness tests. The answers given might be just random guesses. Second was the US pre-exposure effect – conditioning will not occur if people have been preexposed to the US alone. Third is the blocking effect, which indicates that familiar USs should not be used. Lastly, the study presented CS and US simultaneously on the computer screen instead of having the CS preceding the US.

3.5. Studies using unfamiliar CSs, unfamiliar USs, and multiple CS–US pairings Cacioppo et al. (1992) conducted Experiment 1 on 43 students using a 2 (male versus female) by 3 (CS–US contingency: word followed by electric shock, nonword followed by electric shock, word and nonword paired randomly with electric shock) by 2 (experimental stimulus: word, nonword) mixed-model factorial design in which biological sex and CS–US contingency served as between-subjects factors and experimental stimulus served as a within-subjects factor. After completing a pretest, each participant was tested individually. Each participant determined the annoying but not painful intensity of the electric shock to be used as the US. The experimental session consisted of eight presentations of a single word and eight presentations of a nonword. Each experimental stimulus presentation lasted 7 s, and the inter-stimulus interval was randomly varied between 30 and 40 s. In the wordshock condition, the offset of each word presentation was followed by a 0.25-s electric shock to the calf (US), whereas the nonword was never followed by electric shock. Likewise, in the nonwordshock condition, the offset of each nonword presentation was followed by a 0.25-s electric shock to the calf (US), whereas the word was never followed by electric shock. In both conditions, the order of the 16 experimental stimulus presentations was randomized. In the random shock (pseudoconditioning) condition, the 16 7-s experimental stimulus (word and nonword) presentations were randomly ordered with a 30–40 s inter-stimulus interval. A 0.25s electric shock followed the offset of either the word or nonword on eight of the 16 experimental trials. On which eight trials the shock was executed was randomly determined. After the last stimulus presentation, participants rated the pleasantness and familiarity of the same 15 six-letter words and 15 six-letter nonwords in the pretest. In line with Shimp et al. (1991), Cacioppo et al. (1992) found that evaluative conditioning was most effective for unfamiliar CSs (unfamiliar words). In Experiment 2, 22 students read descriptions of the experimental stimuli and the CS–US contingency used in Experiment 1 in a 2 (experimental stimulus: word, nonword) by 3 (CS–US contingency: word followed by shock, nonword followed by shock, random pairings of word and nonword with electric shock) by 2 (experimental instruction: predict participant’s rating, predict experimenter’s expectation) within-subjects factorial design. The results of Experiment 2 revealed that although contingencies between the CSs and the USs were explained and participants tried to predict the experimenter’s hypothesis, they were unable to predict accurately the differential attitude change observed in Experiment 1. Schemer et al. (2008) exposed 78 undergraduates to an evaluative conditioning experiment, in which previously neutral and unknown brands represented CSs, and the actors who were not known to the broad public in a music video functioned as a positively or negatively valenced US. The 2 by 2 between-subjects factorial design contained conditioning valence obtained through the affective image of rap actors in a music video (positive versus negative image) and occurrence of brand placements (placement present versus absent, and participants were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions.

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Understanding that the study dealt with viewers’ evaluation of rap music videos, participants read a newspaper article, which manipulated the image of the rap actors. Then they viewed the rap video on a personal computer for slightly more than four minutes. Equipped with headsets, they were administered in groups of 6–8 individuals in an advertising laboratory with no disturbance among participants. After watching the clip, they filled an online questionnaire consisting of measures of manipulation checks, dependent variables, music preferences, and demographics. In the placement version of the clip, the placement of the target brand occurred 29 times simultaneously with the rap actors. The single appearance duration did not exceed 2 s. The manipulation checks showed that participants reading about negative characteristics of the artists evaluated the artists more negatively than did those reading about positive characteristics, indicating a successful manipulation of the image of the rap actors (or the conditioning valence). The results showed that negatively conditioned individuals had a more negative attitude toward the brand in the placement condition compared to those who saw the rap video without placement, while positively conditioned participants had a more positive attitude toward the brand in the placement condition compared to those who saw the rap video without placement. In contrast, in the no-placement condition, the attitude toward the brand did not differ as a function of conditioning valence, indicating that the attitudes toward the brand improved as a function of the pairing of a brand with favorable rap actors, and the evaluation of a brand decreased when the brand co-occurred with negatively evaluated rap actors. Moreover, attitudinal conditioning effects were stronger in individuals with higher preference for rap music, suggesting that participants liking rap music could be conditioned both positively and negatively. Finally, evaluative conditioning effects were more likely to occur when viewers did not recognize the brand embeds in the rap video. Some reservations applied to the evaluative conditioning effect found in Schemer et al. (2008). First, the Garcia effect suggests that the US and the CS should be matched properly. Not any stimulus can be used as a CS or an US, and they should belong together logically. Second, the study utilized a simultaneous conditioning procedure instead of having the CS preceding the US.

4. Evidence against classical conditioning effects Due to the small number of studies in this section, they are arranged by publication year instead of the methodological classification scheme used in Section 3. Several studies did not find support for the classical conditioning effects. Allen and Madden (1985) adapted Gorn’s (1982) procedures by processing participants individually, using a different pen choice method, conducting a more systematic post-experimental inquiry, using humor as an US, using a green and a black pen as CSs, and adding a buy-back measure. They could not replicate Gorn’s results. Only in the liked US condition was there an effect significantly different from a random choice, but Allen and Madden (1985, p. 309) attributed it to the demand awareness among participants. There were no relationships between the color-selection and buy-back variables. The results of Allen and Madden were not surprising because the design was not much stronger than Gorn’s (1982). The experimental conditions were difficult for classical conditioning to occur due to a single simultaneous pairing of the CS and the US, the use of familiar CSs, and possibly a Garcia effect (i.e., an improper match between the CS and the US). Perhaps the most crucial factor for the lack of any conditioning effect was the fact that participants revealed very little contingency awareness of the CS and the US. This furnished another support for the above-mentioned view that classical conditioning is mediated by contingency awareness.

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In testing the effect of attitude toward the ad on attitude toward the brand from a classical conditioning perspective, Gresham and Shimp (1985) paired an advertised brand with an affectively valenced TV commercial. It was found that only a small portion of the positive- and negative-affect ads showed attitude toward the ad to be a predictor of attitude toward the brand, thus failing to support the classical conditioning mechanism. Negative-affect ads seemed to elicit more of a classical conditioning response than did positive-affect ones. The hypotheses, which were designed to rule out mechanisms other than classical conditioning, were not supported. Part of the inability to support the classical conditioning mechanism in Gresham and Shimp’s study might be traced to the use of familiar TV commercials for mostly mature brands in established product categories. Thus, attitude toward the brand might influence attitude toward the ad, not the other way around. Macklin (1986) exposed preschool children thrice to either an orange or a yellow pencil under three conditions (forward conditioning, simultaneous conditioning, and random control) with a picture of Smurf as an US. No conditioning effect was found – the color selected did not relate to the buy-back variable, replicating Allen and Madden (1985). The lack of support for any classical conditioning effect in Macklin’s study might be due to insufficient number of pairings, a Garcia effect, an US pre-exposure effect, a blocking effect, a latent inhibition effect, a small sample size, and absence of contingency and demand awareness in children participants. Another case against the classical conditioning theory was by Kellaris and Cox (1989). Experiment 1 followed Gorn’s (1982) procedures but used classical music, a yellow pen, a less obtrusive choice procedure, and a new cover story. It used a 2 (liked versus disliked music) by 2 (Gorn’s versus new cover story) factorial design. The music appeal was found to have no effect on choice behavior. The cover story treatment did not affect the guessing of true hypotheses. Experiment 2 examined the role of demand artifacts in Gorn’s experiment. Treatments like those used by Gorn were described rather than administered, as suggested by Sawyer (1975). Strikingly, Gorn’s results were replicated without actual treatments. Twenty-nine percent of the participants asked to report the purpose of the study correctly guessed the main hypothesis. Experiment 3 followed Gorn’s (1982) study with an equally strong music appeal, using a 2 (high versus low music appeal) by 2 (Gorn’s cover story and choice procedures versus more disguised procedures) design. Neither procedures yielded significant relationships between the music appeal and the pen choice. However, there was a significant relationship between the procedure and the guessing of true hypotheses in that 12 of the 15 participants who correctly guessed the hypothesis had received Gorn’s procedure. Kellaris and Cox (1989) was one of the apparent demonstrations of demand artifacts in classical conditioning literature although some drawbacks existed in the experiments. The critical choice measurement would be void if participants did not follow the experimenter’s suggestion of trying the new pen in answering the questionnaires (the ink color differed to designate which pen color the participants had chosen) or if the color participants intended to pick up had all gone from the box. Furthermore, because the procedures were similar to Gorn’s, there was little chance that classical conditioning could occur. As presented earlier, the results of Shimp et al. (1991) showed that the conditioning groups in 11 of the 21 experiments exhibited significantly more positive attitudes toward the CS brands than the random control groups while the remaining 10 experiments did not obtain significant classical conditioning effects. Blair and Shimp (1992) found no significant difference between the nonpreexposed conditioning group and the control group. In other words, the US was not salient enough to produce positive

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attitudinal conditioning for participants in the non-preexposed group. Tom (1995) found that the use of negative music as an US did not affect the preference for either the advertised pen or advertised Chinese ideograph. One of the explanations for this null effect of the negative US [which was in line with the findings of Allen and Madden (1985)] offered by Tom was that the negative music employed was not only disliked but also perceived to be incongruent for the stated purpose. Shimp and Moody (2000) exposed 69 undergraduates to three conditions, namely (i) Feinberg (1986) condition – VISA card stimulus present both at product encoding and rating, (ii) VISA card absent – VISA card stimulus present during encoding of product information but not at rating, and (iii) control – VISA card stimulus absent during both encoding of product information and rating. The VISA card served as an US. Participants were told they were participating in a study simulating a new catalog order center method of shopping. No significant effect was found. The absence of classical conditioning effect in Shimp and Moody’s study might be due to the US pre-exposure effect and the CS lacking predictiveness of the US. Besides, participants revealed very little contingency and demand awareness. Finally, as presented earlier, Gibson (2008) found that the conditioning procedure had no effect on implicit attitudes for either the Coke-lover or Pepsi-lover groups. As for explicit brand attitudes, participants who reported strong pretest preferences continued with those preferences and those who were neutral on the pretest remained neutral after the conditioning procedure. Furthermore, there was no significant main effect for the conditioning procedure and no interaction between conditioning and pretest preference. 5. Conclusion This study reviews empirical research regarding classical conditioning effects on consumer behavior. The majority of the reviewed studies reported significant results supporting classical conditioning effects. This is not surprising given the fact that studies with significant findings have a higher chance to appear in international refereed journals than studies with null effects. The review shows that in cases where classical conditioning effects were found, the results were rather dubious due to deficiencies in methodology and/or possible demand artifacts. In most of these studies, CS–US contingency awareness was necessary for classical conditioning effects to emerge. Alternatively, the effects could be explained by some other mechanisms such as the mere exposure effect and pseudoconditioned responses if no proper control procedures were employed. In cases where classical conditioning effects were not supported, the non-significant results could be attributed to violation of the conditions for classical conditioning to occur, absence of CS–US contingency awareness and demand awareness, or lack of statistical power due to a small sample size. Based on the above evaluation, it seems legitimate to conclude that to date, not much convincing evidence exists for classical conditioning effects in consumer behavior and advertising contexts. Whether this is because (i) the theory itself is false (although a theory cannot be falsified by lack of evidence), (ii) the theory is valid but cannot be extended to affective responses in consumers who are far different from animals on which the theory is based, (iii) the methodology for testing and measuring classical conditioning effects on consumer behavior has not been up to the task, or (iv) classical conditioning effects on humans may occur under specific boundary conditions only, remains to be uncovered. As raised by Janiszewski and Warlop (1993), one reason underlying the inconsistencies in consumer conditioning literature is the flexibility in human learning mechanisms. Humans are very sensitive to the

procedures employed to communicate information and the measures of the effect of these communications. Small procedural changes can significantly affect the learning that is obtained in a session. The findings of each study thus depend on the selection of the CS and the US, the strength of the unconditioned response, inter-trial interval, temporal priority of the CS and the US, number of trials, training environment, test environment, test distracters, CS consistency, control conditions, subject populations, and so forth. Even though classical conditioning effects might really exist, they might not provide much usefulness in marketing given that the affective response changes in consumers do not necessarily lead to actual purchases and the ideal conditions for classical conditioning effects to occur are rather difficult to meet in real life. Specifically, the advertised brand (the CS) will have low predictiveness of the US and thus low chance to elicit the desired unconditioned response if (i) both the CS and the US are presented simultaneously (which is the case in print ads and even in some television commercials); (ii) the CS is presented constantly, followed occasionally by the US (consumers are likely to encounter the brand many times in real life without the presence of the US portrayed in the ad); and (iii) either the US or the CS is frequently encountered alone (which is usually the case in consumers’ daily life). Marketers who are keen to utilize a classical conditioning procedure to elicit certain consumer responses should therefore be aware of its limited chance of success in real marketplace. Most studies reviewed shared the following weaknesses: (i) using familiar CSs and USs, thus constituting the CS lacking predictiveness of the US, the blocking effect, the US pre-exposure effect, and the latent inhibition effect; and (ii) lacking any pretest to ensure that the CS and the US match each other logically and perceptually. Some studies (e.g., Feinberg, 1986; Gorn, 1982; the mood induction experiment of Groenland and Schoormans, 1994; Lie et al., 2010) employed a single pairing of CSs and USs and yet found significant classical conditioning effects. While classical conditioning might occur after one trial, it usually entails a very strong US such as an intense shock or a nauseating drug, which has hardly been used in classical conditioning research in consumer behavior for ethical reasons. Given the prevalent methodological deficiencies and strong demand artifacts of past studies, future research testing classical conditioning effects on consumer behavior should try to improve all of the following aspects within the same experiment to increase internal validity of the research: (i) Making sure that the CS predicts the US by using unfamiliar CSs and USs and by having the CS precede the US. (ii) Pretesting that the CS and the US match each other logically and perceptually. (iii) Using striking CSs and USs and allowing longer inter-trial intervals. (iv) Including various filler materials to reduce participants’ hypothesis guessing. (v) Including a random control group, which is exposed to the same number of CSs and USs as the experimental group but these stimuli are presented randomly with respect to each other. (vi) Including a demand-artifact-checking group, which does not receive the same treatment as the experimental group but merely reads the description of the treatment, in order to compare the results with the experimental group. (vii) Measuring CS–US contingency awareness and hypothesis guessing in every group. (viii) Using both negative and positive USs to see whether classical conditioning effects are present in both.

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