Attitude formation through approach/avoidance: a case of intersecting regularities?

Long abstract: In approach/avoidance procedures participants are typically presented with stimuli belonging to two different categories on a monitor and perform an approach movement (e.g., they pull a joystick toward themselves) in response to one of the categories and an avoidance movement (e.g., they push the joystick away from themselves) in response to the other. Alongside the empirical evidence that approach-avoidance paradigms can effectively change implicit attitudes (e.g., Kawakami et al., 2007), there are also striking proofs that they may at times be ineffective (Vandenbosch & De Houwer, 2011). Here we will describe a new procedure, which has proven very successful for the formation of new attitudes and is based on approach/avoidance. Differently from a typical approach/avoidance procedure, in each of a series of trials participants are presented on the monitor with a stimulus belonging one of four types: two target categories (e.g. Product A, Product B, both unknown to participants before), words related to approach (e.g., near, close), and words related to avoidance (e.g., distant, away). The task consists in categorizing stimuli representing one of the target categories (e.g., Product A) and approach related words by pulling the joystick toward the self, and stimuli representing the other category (e.g., Product B) and words related to avoidance by pushing the joystick away. Among the possible explanations of the enhanced efficacy of this new procedure, as compared to a typical approach-avoidance task, feature intersection will be considered. Short abstract A new procedure is presented, which has proven very successful for the formation of new attitudes and is based on approach/avoidance. Among the possible explanations of its enhanced efficacy as compared to typical approach-avoidance tasks, feature intersection will be considered.