Jan De Houwer
Biographic Data
| ID | 1659567 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jan De Houwer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jan |
| FAMILY NAME | De Houwer |
| SIGNATURE | DE HOUWER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ghent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0488-5224 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 74 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 236 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 74 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The Hexaco Adjective Scale: A Cross-Cultural Validity Study
The HEXACO model defines personality across six dimensions: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness (vs. Anger), Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience. One of its key strengths is that it is based on linguistic research that has been consistently replicated across various cultures. The HEXACO Adjective Scale (HAS), developed in Italian, consists of 60 adjectives designed to evaluate the dimensions of personality accord…
(Deictic) relational responding is not related to autism traits in the general population
Re-examining Spontaneous Trait Transference from an Attributional Perspective
In spontaneous trait transference (STT), communicators describing the behavior of others (i.e., actors) are perceived as having the personality traits implied by the behavior they describe. We tested whether this effect relies on moderators that are indicative of rule-based, attributional processes: the communicator-actor relation (friends vs. enemies; Experiment 1), the diagnosticity of the statement for inferring the implied trait to the commun…
Unconstraining Evaluative Conditioning Research by Using the Reverse Correlation Task
In the evaluative conditioning effect, pairing neutral stimuli (conditioned stimuli) with valenced stimuli (unconditioned stimuli) changes the evaluation of the former. We examined this effect with a reverse correlation task that assesses how participants visually remember the conditioned stimuli. Importantly, this measure (1) does not require participants to evaluate stimuli and (2) allows them to capture multiple trait attributions. In a pre-re…
The role of awareness and demand in evaluative learning
Human likes and dislikes can be established or changed in numerous ways. Three of the most well-studied procedures involve exposing people to regularities in the environment (evaluative conditioning, approach-avoidance, mere exposure), to verbal information about upcoming regularities (evaluative conditioning, approach-avoidance, or mere exposure information), or to verbal information about the evaluative properties of an attitude object (persuas…
The Moderating Role of Neuroticism on Evaluative Conditioning: Evidence From Ambiguous Learning Situations
Numerous studies have demonstrated a link between neuroticism and negative biases. Although some studies suggest that people with high neuroticism give more weight to negative information, others suggest that they respond more strongly to both positive and negative information. We investigated whether neuroticism is related to the evaluation of conditioned stimuli (CSs) in evaluative conditioning procedures that involve ambiguous learning conditi…
Updating stereotypical attributions in light of new information: The attractiveness halo effect changes when attractiveness changes
In the attractiveness halo effect, a single known piece of information about a target stimulus (attractiveness of a person) influences assumptions about a host of other attributes about that target (e.g. this person is socially competent or vain). We examined for the first time whether this effect can be updated, that is, whether new information about physical attractiveness (e.g. that someone is not as attractive as initially thought) can undo t…
Learning in Individual Organisms, Genes, Machines, and Groups: A New Way of Defining and Relating Learning in Different Systems
Learning is a central concept in many scientific disciplines. Communication about research on learning is, however, hampered by the fact that different researchers define learning in different ways. In this article, we introduce the extended functional definition of learning that can be used across scientific disciplines. We provide examples of how the definition can be applied to individual organisms, genes, machines, and groups. Using the exten…
Reasons to Remain Critical About the Literature on Habits: A Commentary on Wood et al. (2022)
Wood et al. (2022) reviewed arguments in support of the idea that much of human behavior is habitual. In this commentary, we first point at ambiguities in the way Wood et al. referred to habits. This allows us to clarify the question that lies at the core of the debate on habits: To what extent is habitual behavior mediated by stimulus–response associations or by goal representations? We then argue that Wood et al. dismissed goal-directed explana…
Instructing via relations: Function transformations of response and consequence functions of upcoming contingencies
Do evaluation and self-identification relate to self-reported and actual social media use
Learned helplessness and its relevance for psychological suffering: A new perspective illustrated with attachment problems, burn-out, and fatigue complaints
We develop a new perspective on various forms of psychological suffering - including attachment issues, burn-out, and fatigue complaints - by drawing on the construct of learned helplessness. We conceptualise learned helplessness in operant terms as the behavioural effects of a lack of reinforcement and in goal-directed terms as the dysregulation of goal-directed behaviour. Our central claim is that if one fails to reach a goal (e.g. the goal to …
Examining Automatic Stereotyping From a Propositional Perspective: Is Automatic Stereotyping Sensitive to Relational and Validity Information
Research on automatic stereotyping is dominated by the idea that automatic stereotyping reflects the activation of (group–trait) associations. In two preregistered experiments (total N = 391), we tested predictions derived from an alternative perspective that suggests that automatic stereotyping is the result of the activation of propositional representations that, unlike associations, can encode relational information and have truth values. Expe…
Forwarding the ACBS Task Force recommendations: The case for the functional-cognitive framework and out-of-sample prediction
Differential Crel and Cfunc acquisition through stimulus pairing
On the structure of relational responding
Illusory-Correlation Effects on Implicit and Explicit Evaluation
Research suggests that people sometimes perceive a relationship between stimuli when no such relationship exists (i.e., illusory correlation). Illusory-correlation effects are thought to play a central role in the formation of stereotypes and evaluations of minority versus majority groups, often leading to less favorable impressions of minorities. Extant theories differ in terms of whether they attribute illusory-correlation effects to processes …
Can (Instructions About) Stimulus Pairings Influence Automatic and Self-Reported Evaluations in the Presence of More Diagnostic Evaluative Information
Evaluative conditioning (EC) and persuasion are important pathways for shaping evaluations. However, little is known about how these pathways interact. Two preregistered experiments (total N = 1,510) examined effects of EC procedures (i.e., stimulus pairings) and EC instructions (i.e., instructions about stimulus pairings) on automatic and self-reported evaluations of social groups in the presence of more diagnostic information about the evaluati…
The Shape of Belief: Developing a Mousetracking-Based Relational Implicit Measure
The Propositional Evaluation Paradigm (PEP) has recently shown promise as a relational implicit measure (i.e., an implicit measure which can specify how stimuli are related). Whereas the standard PEP measures response times, mousetracking is becoming increasingly popular for quantifying response competition, with distinct advantages beyond response times. Across four preregistered experiments ( N = 737), we interface the utility of the PEP method…
On the effectiveness of approach-avoidance instructions and training for changing evaluations of social groups
0.23, Bayes Factor = 4404.42) and evidence for the absence of instruction-based effects (Bayes Factors < 0.19), they also illustrate that there is still much uncertainty regarding the boundary conditions of these effects and the underlying mental processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Changing Deep-Rooted Implicit Evaluation in the Blink of an Eye: Negative Verbal Information Shifts Automatic Liking of Gandhi
It is often assumed that, once established, spontaneous or implicit evaluations are resistant to immediate change. Recent research contradicts this theoretical stance, showing that a person’s implicit evaluations of an attitude object can be changed rapidly in the face of new counterattitudinal information. Importantly, it remains unknown whether such changes can also occur for deep-rooted implicit evaluations of well-known attitude objects. We a…
An Analysis of the Scientific Status and Limitations of the Attitudinal Entropy Framework and an Initial Test of Some of Its Empirical Predictions
Dalege, Borsboom, van Harreveld, and van der Maas (this issue) describe a novel framework for the conceptualization of attitudes that draws on principles from statistical mechanics. A core idea in
On the symbolic generalization of likes and dislikes
Automatic stimulus evaluation depends on goal relevance
To examine whether automatic stimulus evaluation is dependent upon goal relevance, participants were presented with a mixture of (a) goal-induction trials to create a set of goal-relevant and goal-irrelevant stimuli, and (b) evaluative priming trials to capture the automatic evaluation of these stimuli as good or bad. In line with our predictions, a reliable evaluative priming effect was obtained only for stimuli that were relevant for the goal-i…
Examining the contributions of memory-dependent and memory-independent components to evaluative conditioning via instructions
Automaticity: A Theoretical and Conceptual Analysis
Several theoretical views of automaticity are discussed. Most of these suggest that automaticity should be diagnosed by looking at the presence of features such as unintentional, uncontrolled/uncontrollable, goal independent, autonomous, purely stimulus driven, unconscious, efficient, and fast. Contemporary views further suggest that these features should be investigated separately. The authors examine whether features of automaticity can be dise…
Evaluative conditioning in humans: A meta-analysis
This article presents a meta-analysis of research on evaluative conditioning (EC), defined as a change in the liking of a stimulus (conditioned stimulus; CS) that results from pairing that stimulus with other positive or negative stimuli (unconditioned stimulus; US). Across a total of 214 studies included in the main sample, the mean EC effect was d = .52, with a 95% confidence interval of .466-.582. As estimated from a random-effects model, abou…
A Structural and Process Analysis of the Implicit Association Test
Novel attitudes can be faked on the Implicit Association Test
Formation, representation, and activation of contextualized attitudes
Adult attachment and attention to positive and negative emotional face expressions
On the predictive validity of indirect attitude measures: Prediction of consumer choice behavior on the basis of affective priming in the picture–picture naming task
Affective Priming of Pronunciation Responses: Effects of Target Degradation
Mechanisms underlying approach-avoidance instruction effects on implicit evaluation: Results of a preregistered adversarial collaboration
Instructing implicit processes: When instructions to approach or avoid influence implicit but not explicit evaluation
On angry approach and fearful avoidance: The goal-dependent nature of emotional approach and avoidance tendencies
The Impact of Persuasive Messages on IAT Performance is Moderated by Source Attractiveness and Likeability
In two studies, participants read persuasive messages introduced by an attractive (Study 1) or likeable (Study 2) source before completing measures of implicit and explicit evaluations. The persuasive messages were in favor of an unfamiliar brand of facial soap (Study 1) and the implementation of comprehensive examinations at the participants' university (Study 2). Results showed that persuasive messages had a stronger impact on an Implicit Assoc…
Observational Conditioning of Food Valence in Humans
Failures to change stimulus evaluations by means of subliminal approach and avoidance training
Previous research suggests that the repeated performance of approach and avoidance (AA) actions in response to a stimulus causes changes in stimulus evaluations. Kawakami, Phills, Steele, and Dovidio (2007) and Jones, Vilensky, Vasey, and Fazio (2013) provided evidence that these AA training effects occur even when stimuli are presented only subliminally. We also examined whether reliable AA training effects can be observed with subliminal stimul…
Go With Your Gut: Effects in the Affect Misattribution Procedure Become Stronger When Participants Are Encouraged to Rely on Their Gut Feelings
The Affective Misattribution Procedure (AMP) is one of the leading examples of a class of tasks used to measure attitudes implicitly. Based on the idea that AMP effects occur because participants misattribute affective responses, we hypothesized that asking participants to focus on their affective, gut-level responses would increase the magnitude of AMP eaffects. In line with this prediction, results showed that participants who completed the AMP…
How farsighted are behavioral tendencies of approach and avoidance? The effect of stimulus valence on immediate vs. ultimate distance change
On the effectiveness of approach-avoidance instructions and training for changing evaluations of social groups
0.23, Bayes Factor = 4404.42) and evidence for the absence of instruction-based effects (Bayes Factors < 0.19), they also illustrate that there is still much uncertainty regarding the boundary conditions of these effects and the underlying mental processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
On the symbolic generalization of likes and dislikes
Examining the contributions of memory-dependent and memory-independent components to evaluative conditioning via instructions
Unintended Allocation of Spatial Attention to Goal-Relevant but Not to Goal-Related Events
We investigated whether words relevant to a person's current goal and words related to that goal influence the orienting of attention even when an intention to attend to the goal-relevant and goal-related stimuli is not present. Participants performed a modified spatial cueing paradigm combined with a second task that induced a goal. The results showed that the induced goal led to the orienting of attention to goal-relevant words in the spatial c…
The role of awareness and demand in evaluative learning
Human likes and dislikes can be established or changed in numerous ways. Three of the most well-studied procedures involve exposing people to regularities in the environment (evaluative conditioning, approach-avoidance, mere exposure), to verbal information about upcoming regularities (evaluative conditioning, approach-avoidance, or mere exposure information), or to verbal information about the evaluative properties of an attitude object (persuas…
Effects in the Affect Misattribution Procedure Are Modulated by Feature-Specific Attention Allocation
We examined whether automatic stimulus evaluation as measured by the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) is moderated by the degree to which attention is assigned to the evaluative stimulus dimension (i.e., feature-specific attention allocation, FSAA). In two experiments, one group of participants completed a standard AMP while attending to evaluative stimulus information. A second group of participants completed the AMP while attending to non-…
The affective priming effect: Automatic activation of evaluative information in memory
Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, and Kardes (1986) argued that affect may be activated automatically from memory on the mere observation of an affect-loaded stimulus. Using a variant of the standard sequential priming paradigm, it was demonstrated that the time needed to evaluate target words as positive or negative decreased if they were preceded by a similarly valenced prime word, but increased when preceded by a prime of opposite valence. Several a…
Observational Conditioning of Food Valence in Humans
Evaluative Learning with “Subliminally” Presented Stimuli
Contingency Awareness and Evaluative Conditioning: When Will It Be Enough
Association learning of likes and dislikes: A review of 25 years of research on human evaluative conditioning
Evaluative conditioning refers to changes in the liking of a stimulus that are due to the fact that the stimulus has been paired with other, positive or negative stimuli. Although evaluative conditioning appears to be subjected to certain boundary conditions, significant evaluative conditioning effects have been obtained using a large variety of stimuli and procedures. Some data suggest that evaluative conditioning can occur under conditions that…
Association learning of likes and dislikes: A review of 25 years of research on human evaluative conditioning
Evaluative conditioning refers to changes in the liking of a stimulus that are due to the fact that the stimulus has been paired with other, positive or negative stimuli. Although evaluative conditioning appears to be subjected to certain boundary conditions, significant evaluative conditioning effects have been obtained using a large variety of stimuli and procedures. Some data suggest that evaluative conditioning can occur under conditions that…
A Structural and Process Analysis of the Implicit Association Test
Affective Priming of Pronunciation Responses: Effects of Target Degradation
The Extrinsic Affective Simon Task
A modified version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) is described that is based on a comparison of performance on trials within a single task rather than on a comparison of performance on different tasks. In two experiments, participants saw white words that needed to be classified on the basis of stimulus valence and colored words that were to be classified on the basis of color. On trials where the colored word referred to a positive targe…
Selective attention to threat in the dot probe paradigm: Differentiating vigilance and difficulty to disengage
Does Imminent Threat Capture and Hold Attention
According to models of attention and emotion, threat captures and holds attention. In behavioral tasks, robust evidence has been found for attentional holding but not for attentional capture by threat. An important explanation for the absence of attentional capture effects is that the visual stimuli used posed no genuine threat. The present study investigated whether visual cues that signal an aversive white noise can elicit attentional capture a…
What are Implicit Measures and Why are We Using Them?
Novel attitudes can be faked on the Implicit Association Test
On the predictive validity of indirect attitude measures: Prediction of consumer choice behavior on the basis of affective priming in the picture–picture naming task
Automaticity: A Theoretical and Conceptual Analysis
Several theoretical views of automaticity are discussed. Most of these suggest that automaticity should be diagnosed by looking at the presence of features such as unintentional, uncontrolled/uncontrollable, goal independent, autonomous, purely stimulus driven, unconscious, efficient, and fast. Contemporary views further suggest that these features should be investigated separately. The authors examine whether features of automaticity can be dise…
A Conceptual and Theoretical Analysis of Evaluative Conditioning
Evaluative conditioning is best defined as an effect, that is, as a change in the valence of a stimulus that results from pairing the stimulus with another stimulus. This definition has several advantages that are made explicit in this paper. One of the advantages is that it clarifies that evaluative conditioning can be due to multiple processes. Therefore, the conditions under which evaluative conditioning is observed can depend on the processes…
What's in a name? Attachment-related attentional bias
Participants completed a dot probe task that presented pairs of first names: the participant's own name and a neutral name (Experiments 1-4), the name of their attachment figure and a neutral name (Experiments 1-4), or the name of a known person and a neutral name (Experiments 2-4). A significant attentional bias effect was found for the attachment name in attachment-related contexts, whether they were threatening or positive. The results of Expe…
Allocation of spatial attention to emotional stimuli depends upon arousal and not valence
Attentional allocation to emotional stimuli is often proposed to be driven by valence and in particular by negativity. However, many negative stimuli are also arousing leaving the question whether valence or arousal accounts for this effect. The authors examined whether the valence or the arousal level of emotional stimuli influences the allocation of spatial attention using a modified spatial cueing task. Participants responded to targets that w…
Adult attachment and attention to positive and negative emotional face expressions
The propositional approach to associative learning as an alternative for association formation models
The propositional nature of human associative learning
The past 50 years have seen an accumulation of evidence suggesting that associative learning depends on high-level cognitive processes that give rise to propositional knowledge. Yet, many learning theorists maintain a belief in a learning mechanism in which links between mental representations are formed automatically. We characterize and highlight the differences between the propositional and link approaches, and review the relevant empirical ev…
Implicit measures: A normative analysis and review
Implicit measures can be defined as outcomes of measurement procedures that are caused in an automatic manner by psychological attributes. To establish that a measurement outcome is an implicit measure, one should examine (a) whether the outcome is causally produced by the psychological attribute it was designed to measure, (b) the nature of the processes by which the attribute causes the outcome, and (c) whether these processes operate automatic…
Theoretical claims necessitate basic research: Reply to Gawronski, Lebel, Peters, and Banse (2009) and Nosek and Greenwald (2009)
The authors of this reply article note that B. Gawronski, E. P. LeBel, K. R. Peters, and R. Banse (a) expressed agreement in their comment with the analysis put forward in the target article (J. De Houwer, S. Teige-Mocigemba, A. Spruyt, & A. Moors) and (b) pointed to a further implication for the way in which the implicitness of a measure should be examined. The current authors note that B. A. Nosek and A. G. Greenwald, on the other hand, raised …
Contingency learning and unlearning in the blink of an eye: A resource dependent process
How farsighted are behavioral tendencies of approach and avoidance? The effect of stimulus valence on immediate vs. ultimate distance change
Psychology (69 works) · Cognitive psychology (56 works) · Social Psychology (47 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (31 works) · Computer Science (26 works) · Cognition (23 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (22 works) · Social Psychology (20 works) · Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies (18 works) · Neuroscience (17 works)