Vicarious effects of approach/avoidance behaviours on observers

Social learning is important for attitude formation. By learning how others (“models”) behave toward target objects, individuals can form their own attitudes. Previous research has shown that observing a model’s emotional reaction can influence how the observer evaluates a target stimulus (observational evaluative conditioning). Our results indicate that such learning effects also emerge with approach/avoidance-related behaviours. Through 5 experiments, we investigated how learning information about the behaviours of other individuals influenced participants’ own preferences. In these experiments, participants read a vignette describing a fictitious character approaching a food brand and avoiding another. Next, they answered an IAT and a semantic differential that measured the preferences between the two brands. Results showed that participants preferred the approached brand, both in self-reported and spontaneous preferences (vicarious approach/avoidance effect). This vicarious effect was robust because it also emerged when participants were informed that the model was a mere executor (i.e, the decision as to which object to approach and which to avoid was determined by a coin toss). Besides their theoretical implications regarding attitudes and attitude change, these results also have potential practical implications for developing interventions aimed at attitude formation and protecting the public from unwanted persuasion attempts.