CONCEPTUAL, THEORETICAL, AND METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES IN EVALUATIVE CONDITIONING RESEARCH

To understand the impact of social cognition on behavior, it is essential to understand how attitudes are acquired, updated, and mapped onto judgments, decisions, and actions. Evaluative conditioning (EC) affords an experimental model of a particular procedural notion of attitude acquisition and change. The present editorial offers an overview of past and current developments in EC research in general and the new developments and theoretical ideas covered in this special issue in particular. We discuss three central issues: the automaticity question, mechanistic views of EC, and its definition, and discuss how the articles in this special issue inform all of these topics. Our editorial closes with a new constructivist view on EC that has the potential to integrate several of the latest developments in the field.