Changing implicit attitudes by contrasting the self with others

When using evaluative conditioning (EC) procedures for changing implicit attitudes, the self is a particularly efficient unconditioned stimulus (US). So far, in previous studies in which the self has been used as a US, a comparison category has usually been present, either as the generic category “others” or as specific individuals. As such, it is unclear what the influence is, if any, of the presence of a comparison category “others” or other comparison stimuli. In this contribution, we present three studies with the aim of disentangling the effects of self versus others by using the two types of US separately (Study 1), and by manipulating positivity, concreteness (Study 2), level of differentiation, and heterogeneity (Study 3) of the category “others.” Overall, these studies provide evidence that whereas the self is an effective US, the category “others,” when used in conjunction with self, fails to provide a detectable influence