Christian Unkelbach
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 368185 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Christian Unkelbach |
| NOMBRES | Christian |
| APELLIDO | Unkelbach |
| FIRMA | UNKELBACH C |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Cologne |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3793-6246 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 53 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 219 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 53 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2001 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
An Experience‐Sampling Study on the Frequency and Diversity of Positive and Negative Affective States
Ecological models explain social phenomena by assuming specific properties of the world an individual lives in. The evaluative information ecology model (Unkelbach et al. 2019) assumes two such properties: Positive information is more frequent (i.e., positivity prevalence), but negative information is more diverse (i.e., negativity diversity). However, so far there is no simultaneous test of these two assumed properties. Assuming that evaluative …
Attitude Formation in More- and Less-Complex Social Environments
We investigate how the complexity of the social environment (more vs. less groups) influences attitude formation. We hypothesize that facing a larger number of groups renders learning processes about these groups noisier and more regressive, which has two important implications. First, more-complex social environments should lead perceivers to underestimate actual group differences. Second, because most people usually behave positively, more-comp…
Repeating Statements Increases Source Credibility
Repeating statements increases their perceived truth. Yet, whether repetition enhances the credibility of their source remains unexplored. We examined a repetition-induced source credibility effect in four preregistered experiments. In Experiment 1 ( N = 90), we exposed participants to 20 unrepeated and 20 repeated statements communicated by 40 individuals. Repetition significantly increased both statement truth and source credibility. Experiment…
Illusions of knowledge due to mere repetition
Repeating information increases people's belief that the repeated information is true. This truth effect has been widely researched and is relevant for topics such as fake news and misinformation. Another effect of repetition, which is also relevant to those topics, has not been extensively studied so far: Do people believe they knew something before it was repeated? We used a standard truth effect paradigm in four pre-registered experiments (tot…
People underestimate the influence of repetition on truth judgments (and more so for themselves than for others)
People judge repeated statements as more truthful than new statements: a truth effect. In three pre-registered experiments (N = 463), we examined whether people expect repetition to influence truth judgments more for others than for themselves: a bias blind spot in the truth effect. In Experiments 1 and 2, using moderately plausible and implausible statements, respectively, the test for the bias blind spot did not pass the significance threshold …
Psychological Distance Increases Conceptual Generalization
We predicted and found in three experiments that psychological distance increases conceptual generalization. We manipulated psychological distance by describing a medicine as being either domestic (proximal) or foreign (distal) and examined generalization by testing how information about initial experience (positive vs. negative) with this medicine influences evaluations of similar products. In all three experiments, and across both Israeli and G…
Quality, Replicability, and Transparency in Research in Social Psychology
In 2020, the Division of Social Psychology of the German Psychological Society (DGPs) published 11 methodological recommendations for improving the quality, replicability, and transparency of social psychological research. We evaluate these recommendations in a quantitative and qualitative survey conducted with members of the division ( N = 54). Most – but not all – recommendations are well-known and understood by these members of the division. F…
Why is there no negativity bias in evaluative conditioning? A cognitive-ecological answer
Evaluative conditioning (EC) is the change of a conditioned stimulus's evaluation due to its pairing with an unconditioned stimulus (US). While learning typically shows negativity biases, we found no such biases in a reanalysis of meta-analytic EC data. We provide and test a cognitive-ecological answer for this lack of negativity bias. We assume that negativity effects follow from ecological differences in evaluative information's distributions (…
Ideological beliefs as cues to exploitation-exploration behavior
A cognitive–ecological approach to temporal self-appraisals
1,796) and an integrative data analysis confirmed the cognitive-ecological model's predictions for temporal self-appraisals. However, we found no evidence for motivated self-perception across time. We discuss the implications of these findings for temporal self-appraisal theory and other aspects of self and identity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Sampling in Judgment and Decision Making
Sampling approaches to judgment and decision making are distinct from traditional accounts in psychology and neuroscience. While these traditional accounts focus on limitations of the human mind as a major source of bounded rationality, the sampling approach originates in a broader cognitive-ecological perspective. It starts from the fundamental assumption that in order to understand intra-psychic cognitive processes one first has to understand t…
Relativity in Social Cognition
A key challenge for social psychology is to identify unifying principles that account for the complex dynamics of social behaviour. We propose psychological relativity and its core mechanism of comparison as one such unifying principle. To support our proposal, we review recent evidence investigating basic processes underlying and novel applications of social comparisons. Specifically, we clarify determinants of assimilation and contrast, evaluat…
Monetary incentives do not reduce the repetition-induced truth effect
People rate and judge repeated information more true than novel information. This truth-by-repetition effect is of relevance for explaining belief in fake news, conspiracy theories, or misinformation effects. To ascertain whether increased motivation could reduce this effect, we tested the influence of monetary incentives on participants’ truth judgments. We used a standard truth paradigm, consisting of a presentation and judgment phase with fact…
Rational Dictators in the Dictator Game Are Seen as Cold and Agentic but Not Intelligent
In Dictator Games, dictators decide how much of a given endowment to send to receivers with no further interactions. We explored the social inferences people draw about dictators from the dictators’ money amount sent and vice versa in 11 experiments ( N = 1,425): Participants rated “unfair” dictators, who sent little or no money, as more agentic, but less communal than “fair” dictators, who sent half of the endowment. Conversely, participants exp…
Typical is Trustworthy - Evidence for a Generalized Heuristic
When judging whether someone is trustworthy, people rely on the perceptual typicality of a person’s face. We tested whether a more general typical-is-trustworthy heuristic exists based on the descriptive typicality of a person. In four experiments, we provided participants with descriptive information about the typicality of target persons’ attributes (i.e., population prevalence) and measured perceived trustworthiness. Participants consistently …
Repeating stereotypes
People believe repeated information more than novel information. Classic research on this repetition‐induced truth effect used trivia statements as information and truth ratings as the main DV. We investigate how repeating stereotypes about groups influence the stereotypes' believability and decisions about group members. Participants learned positive stereotypes about two groups of aliens. However, for one group, we repeated the stereotypes. The…
When do people learn likes and dislikes from co-occurrences? A dual-force perspective on evaluative conditioning
Evaluative Conditioning (EC) research shows that people learn their likes and dislikes due to the co-occurrence of stimuli (CS and US) in the environment. Most recent EC research addressed processes underlying this phenomenon: how do people acquire their likes and dislikes? We address the question of when people learn from co-occurrences. To understand when learning occurs rather than how it occurs, we apply a dual-force perspective (Bless & Fied…
Relational versus structural goals prioritize different social information
People gather information about others along a few fundamental dimensions; their current goals determine which dimensions they most need to know. As proponents of competing social-evaluation models, we sought to study the dimensions that perceivers spontaneously prioritize when gathering information about unknown social groups. Because priorities depend on functions, having relational goals (e.g., deciding whether and how to interact with a group…
Q-SpAM
Measuring the similarity of stimuli is of great interest to a variety of social scientists. Spatial arrangement by dragging and dropping 'more similar' targets closer together on the computer screen is a precise and efficient method to measure stimulus similarity. We present Qualtrics-spatial arrangement method (Q-SpAM), a feature-rich and user-friendly online version of spatial arrangement. Combined with crowdsourcing platforms, Q-SpAM provides …
The Role of Relational Qualifiers in Attribute Conditioning
In attribute conditioning (AC), neutral stimuli (CSs) acquire specific attributes through mere pairings with other stimuli possessing that attribute (USs). For example, if a neutral person “Neal” is paired with athletic “Wade,” participants judge Neal as more athletic compared with when Wade would be unathletic. Building on Evaluative Conditioning research, we introduced relational qualifiers between CS and US to probe the contribution of proposi…
Fluent processing leads to positive stimulus evaluations even when base rates suggest negative evaluations
A Cognitive-Ecological Approach to Temporal Self-Appraisal
According to the evaluative information ecology model of social-comparison, people are more similar on their positive traits and tend to differ on their negative traits. This means that comparisons based on differences will naturally produce negative evaluations, whereas those based on similarities will produce positive evaluations. In this research we apply and extend this model to theorize about the outcomes of temporal self-comparisons. We pre…
Repetition increases both the perceived truth and fakeness of information
Attitudes from mere co-occurrences are guided by differentiation
People often form attitudes about objects, individuals, or groups by examining and comparing their attributes. Such attribute-based attitude formation is guided by a differentiation principle: Whether people come to like or dislike an attitude object depends on the object's attributes that differentiate it from other objects. Attributes that are redundant with previously encountered attitude objects are typically cancelled out. We tested whether …
Groups' warmth is a personal matter
The ABC of stereotypes about groups
Previous research argued that stereotypes differ primarily on the 2 dimensions of warmth/communion and competence/agency. We identify an empirical gap in support for this notion. The theoretical model constrains stereotypes a priori to these 2 dimensions; without this constraint, participants might spontaneously employ other relevant dimensions. We fill this gap by complementing the existing theory-driven approaches with a data-driven approach th…
The turban effect
Why positive information is processed faster
The authors postulate and show a speed advantage in the processing of positive information and hypothesize that this advantage is caused by the higher density of positive information in memory: Positive information is more similar to other positive information, in comparison with the similarity of negative information to other negative information. This "density" hypothesis is supported by multidimensional scaling of evaluative stimuli and respon…
On the respective contributions of awareness of unconditioned stimulus valence and unconditioned stimulus identity in attitude formation through evaluative conditioning
Evaluative conditioning (EC) is a central mechanism for both classic and current theories of attitude formation. In contrast to Pavlovian conditioning, it is often conceptualized as a form of evaluative learning that occurs without awareness of the conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus (CS-US) contingencies. In the present research, the authors directly address this point by assessing the respective roles of US valence awareness and US iden…
Groups' warmth is a personal matter
Can bad weather improve your memory? An unobtrusive field study of natural mood effects on real-life memory
My friends are all alike — the relation between liking and perceived similarity in person perception
Attitudes from mere co-occurrences are guided by differentiation
People often form attitudes about objects, individuals, or groups by examining and comparing their attributes. Such attribute-based attitude formation is guided by a differentiation principle: Whether people come to like or dislike an attitude object depends on the object's attributes that differentiate it from other objects. Attributes that are redundant with previously encountered attitude objects are typically cancelled out. We tested whether …
Experiential fluency and declarative advice jointly inform judgments of truth
Increasing Replicability
Relational versus structural goals prioritize different social information
People gather information about others along a few fundamental dimensions; their current goals determine which dimensions they most need to know. As proponents of competing social-evaluation models, we sought to study the dimensions that perceivers spontaneously prioritize when gathering information about unknown social groups. Because priorities depend on functions, having relational goals (e.g., deciding whether and how to interact with a group…
Halo effects from agency behaviors and communion behaviors depend on social context
We investigate halo effects from agency behaviors and communion behaviors in different social contexts. According to the salient dimension model, attributes elicit halo effects on the ratings of other, unrelated attributes when they are relevant in a situation. Given that communion behaviors are more relevant in social and care‐related jobs, they should elicit stronger halo effects than agency behaviors in this context. In the context of scientif…
Alcohol consumption increases bias to shoot at Middle Eastern but not White targets
Alcohol has been implicated in intergroup aggression and hostility. The effect of consuming alcohol relative to a placebo on hostile cognitive biases toward a social category typically stereotyped as threatening and hostile (i.e., Middle Eastern men) was tested. Undergraduates ( N = 81) consumed either an intoxicating dose of alcohol (BrAC = .05% by vol.) or placebo. Then, they played a shooter game in which they were asked to shoot at targets ho…
Hearing a statement now and believing the opposite later
Great oaks from giant acorns grow
Causal impact is maximal when weak causes have strong effects. Do people understand this logic when they assess causal impact? In four experiments, participants judged the causal impact of strong or weak dietary treatments leading to strong or weak health effects in fictitious health studies. Rather than following the ratio of effect strength to treatment strength, judgments were influenced by three aspects of the detectability of a cause–effect …
Pseudocontingencies in a simulated classroom
The pseudocontingency (PC) illusion is investigated in a simulated classroom setting. Related to the notion of ecological correlations, PCs arise when the assessment of contingencies at the individual level is affected by the base-rate relations at the group level. Positive PCs arise when base rates of 2 variables are skewed in the same direction (e.g., high ability and high motivation), whereas negative PCs arise when base rates are skewed in op…
Is Mood Congruency an Effect of Genuine Memory or Response Bias
A cognitive–ecological approach to temporal self-appraisals
1,796) and an integrative data analysis confirmed the cognitive-ecological model's predictions for temporal self-appraisals. However, we found no evidence for motivated self-perception across time. We discuss the implications of these findings for temporal self-appraisal theory and other aspects of self and identity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
When do people learn likes and dislikes from co-occurrences? A dual-force perspective on evaluative conditioning
Evaluative Conditioning (EC) research shows that people learn their likes and dislikes due to the co-occurrence of stimuli (CS and US) in the environment. Most recent EC research addressed processes underlying this phenomenon: how do people acquire their likes and dislikes? We address the question of when people learn from co-occurrences. To understand when learning occurs rather than how it occurs, we apply a dual-force perspective (Bless & Fied…
On the Stability of Evaluative Conditioning Effects
Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to valence changes in neutral stimuli (CSs) through repeated pairing with liked or disliked stimuli (USs). The present study examined the stability of EC effects in the course of 1 week. We investigated how this stability depends on memory for US valence and US identity. We also investigated whether CSs evaluations occurring immediately after conditioning (i.e., evaluative consolidation) are necessary for stabl…
Why is there no negativity bias in evaluative conditioning? A cognitive-ecological answer
Evaluative conditioning (EC) is the change of a conditioned stimulus's evaluation due to its pairing with an unconditioned stimulus (US). While learning typically shows negativity biases, we found no such biases in a reanalysis of meta-analytic EC data. We provide and test a cognitive-ecological answer for this lack of negativity bias. We assume that negativity effects follow from ecological differences in evaluative information's distributions (…
Repeating stereotypes
People believe repeated information more than novel information. Classic research on this repetition‐induced truth effect used trivia statements as information and truth ratings as the main DV. We investigate how repeating stereotypes about groups influence the stereotypes' believability and decisions about group members. Participants learned positive stereotypes about two groups of aliens. However, for one group, we repeated the stereotypes. The…
The moderating role of attribute accessibility in conditioning multiple specific attributes
Attribute conditioning (AC) refers to people's changed assessment of stimuli's (conditioned stimuli, CSs) attributes due to pairings with stimuli possessing these attributes (unconditioned stimuli, USs). Up to now, research only showed conditioning of only one attribute within a conditioning session (e.g., athleticism) and measured assessment changes in only this single attribute. The current study shows attribute‐specific AC effects in multi‐att…
Is Mood Congruency an Effect of Genuine Memory or Response Bias
Pseudocontingencies in a simulated classroom
The pseudocontingency (PC) illusion is investigated in a simulated classroom setting. Related to the notion of ecological correlations, PCs arise when the assessment of contingencies at the individual level is affected by the base-rate relations at the group level. Positive PCs arise when base rates of 2 variables are skewed in the same direction (e.g., high ability and high motivation), whereas negative PCs arise when base rates are skewed in op…
Can bad weather improve your memory? An unobtrusive field study of natural mood effects on real-life memory
The turban effect
Why positive information is processed faster
The authors postulate and show a speed advantage in the processing of positive information and hypothesize that this advantage is caused by the higher density of positive information in memory: Positive information is more similar to other positive information, in comparison with the similarity of negative information to other negative information. This "density" hypothesis is supported by multidimensional scaling of evaluative stimuli and respon…
A multinomial modeling approach to dissociate different components of the truth effect
On the respective contributions of awareness of unconditioned stimulus valence and unconditioned stimulus identity in attitude formation through evaluative conditioning
Evaluative conditioning (EC) is a central mechanism for both classic and current theories of attitude formation. In contrast to Pavlovian conditioning, it is often conceptualized as a form of evaluative learning that occurs without awareness of the conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus (CS-US) contingencies. In the present research, the authors directly address this point by assessing the respective roles of US valence awareness and US iden…
A Turban Effect, Too
Traditional Muslim headscarves are called hijabs. The authors show that hijabs and headscarves are closely associated with people’s mental representation of “typical” Muslim women in Germany. They then investigate the influence of wearing such hijabs on acceptance rates in a human resources selection procedure. In this paradigm, the authors demonstrate a selection bias against women wearing hijabs: Although factual information about academic achi…
Lottery attractiveness and presentation mode of probability and value information
The attractiveness of lotteries that vary in p (probability) and o (outcome) depends on the presentation mode of p and o information. Extending previous findings on temporally experienced p , we manipulate the numerically stated versus spatially experienced format of both p (graphical presentation of a distribution of lottery tickets in an urn) and o (distribution of money notes). Lottery attractiveness ratings were sensitive to the expected valu…
The Impact of Regulatory Fit on Performance in an Inattentional Blindness Paradigm
When people's self-regulatory focus (e.g., focus on gains vs. focus on avoiding losses) matches environmental demands (e.g., search gains vs. avoid losses), Regulatory Focus Theory predicts performance improvements because of "regulatory fit" (Higgins, 1997). In this article, the authors investigate attentional differences due to regulatory fit as a possible cause for changes in performance, using an inattentional blindness paradigm. Participants…
Beyond Evaluative Conditioning! Evidence for Transfer of Non-Evaluative Attributes
Evaluative conditioning is the valence transfer from positive or negative stimuli to initially neutral stimuli through repeated co-occurrences of those stimuli. Theoretically, it should also be possible to condition non-evaluative attributes. Three experiments show the transfer of a non-evaluative attribute: By repeatedly presenting neutral people with athletic or nonathletic people, initially neutral people became more athletic while valence was…
Fluency and positivity as possible causes of the truth effect
Great oaks from giant acorns grow
Causal impact is maximal when weak causes have strong effects. Do people understand this logic when they assess causal impact? In four experiments, participants judged the causal impact of strong or weak dietary treatments leading to strong or weak health effects in fictitious health studies. Rather than following the ratio of effect strength to treatment strength, judgments were influenced by three aspects of the detectability of a cause–effect …
Social Psychology – Change and Consistency
On the Stability of Evaluative Conditioning Effects
Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to valence changes in neutral stimuli (CSs) through repeated pairing with liked or disliked stimuli (USs). The present study examined the stability of EC effects in the course of 1 week. We investigated how this stability depends on memory for US valence and US identity. We also investigated whether CSs evaluations occurring immediately after conditioning (i.e., evaluative consolidation) are necessary for stabl…
The Best of Times, the Worst of Times
Hearing a statement now and believing the opposite later
The moderating role of attribute accessibility in conditioning multiple specific attributes
Attribute conditioning (AC) refers to people's changed assessment of stimuli's (conditioned stimuli, CSs) attributes due to pairings with stimuli possessing these attributes (unconditioned stimuli, USs). Up to now, research only showed conditioning of only one attribute within a conditioning session (e.g., athleticism) and measured assessment changes in only this single attribute. The current study shows attribute‐specific AC effects in multi‐att…
Looking Back and Looking Forward
Alcohol consumption increases bias to shoot at Middle Eastern but not White targets
Alcohol has been implicated in intergroup aggression and hostility. The effect of consuming alcohol relative to a placebo on hostile cognitive biases toward a social category typically stereotyped as threatening and hostile (i.e., Middle Eastern men) was tested. Undergraduates ( N = 81) consumed either an intoxicating dose of alcohol (BrAC = .05% by vol.) or placebo. Then, they played a shooter game in which they were asked to shoot at targets ho…
My friends are all alike — the relation between liking and perceived similarity in person perception
The ABC of stereotypes about groups
Previous research argued that stereotypes differ primarily on the 2 dimensions of warmth/communion and competence/agency. We identify an empirical gap in support for this notion. The theoretical model constrains stereotypes a priori to these 2 dimensions; without this constraint, participants might spontaneously employ other relevant dimensions. We fill this gap by complementing the existing theory-driven approaches with a data-driven approach th…
Increasing Replicability
Moral Character Impression Formation Depends on the Valence Homogeneity of the Context
People quickly form impressions about moral character; for example, if people learn that someone cheated, they form a negative impression about that person’s character and expect that person to cheat in the future. Four studies show that the formation of such moral character impressions depends on the degree of valence homogeneity in the target’s context. We argue that this is the case because the degree of homogeneity in the context (the evaluat…
Halo effects from agency behaviors and communion behaviors depend on social context
We investigate halo effects from agency behaviors and communion behaviors in different social contexts. According to the salient dimension model, attributes elicit halo effects on the ratings of other, unrelated attributes when they are relevant in a situation. Given that communion behaviors are more relevant in social and care‐related jobs, they should elicit stronger halo effects than agency behaviors in this context. In the context of scientif…
Psychology (51 obras) · Social Psychology (44 obras) · Cognitive psychology (31 obras) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (24 obras) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (21 obras) · Social Psychology (19 obras) · Cognition (16 obras) · Computer Science (16 obras) · Epistemology (14 obras) · Cultural Differences and Values (13 obras)