The relative importance of contingency and contiguity factors on evaluative conditioning

The main target of this thesis is to examine the relative importance of contingency and contiguity factors on the evaluative conditioning (EC) effect. To this end, three experiments were conducted with a total of 176 people (96 Female, 78 Male). In the experiments, 45 face pictures were used as the conditional stimulus (CS) and 51 International Affective Picture System (IAPS) pictures (16 positive, 16 negative and 19 neutral pictures) were used as the unconditional stimulus (US), which were determined by a pilot study. The experiments conducted in a computer environment by a code. All three experiments consisted of three main phases: baseline, acquisition, and post-acquisition phases. In the acquisition phase, CS and US are paired. By this pairing, it was expected that the valence of CS would change in the direction of the valence of the US which it was paired. In Experiment 1, a potential difference in terms of EC effect at different levels of contingency was examined with a two-group mixed design using the delayed conditioning. While there was no EC effect in the low contingency group, positive EC effect was found in the high contingency group. In Experiment 2, a within group experimental design with two different levels of CS-US contingency was created by using the simultaneous conditioning. In Experiment 2, no EC effect was detected. In Experiment 3, the effect of contiguity and contingency factors on the EC effect by using a three-group mixed design with the delayed conditioning was examined. Negative EC effect was found on the combined data of the experimental groups and for Group High Contingency 2. These findings indicate that EC effect is not completely independent from the contingency. There is no clear finding about the effect of the contiguity factor on EC, and further studies should be conducted to have insights on this factor. Keywords: Evaluative Conditioning, Evaluative Conditioning Effect, Contingency, Contiguity, Delayed Conditioning