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Evaluative Conditioning of Food Technologies
Author(s) -
Loebnitz Natascha,
Grunert Klaus G.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
psychology and marketing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.035
H-Index - 116
eISSN - 1520-6793
pISSN - 0742-6046
DOI - 10.1002/mar.20813
Subject(s) - conditioning , psychology , context (archaeology) , product (mathematics) , extinction (optical mineralogy) , affect (linguistics) , control (management) , social psychology , cognitive psychology , marketing , communication , computer science , business , statistics , mathematics , paleontology , geometry , artificial intelligence , biology
ABSTRACT Consumer attitudes play an important role in the acceptance of new technologies. The success of food innovations depends on understanding how consumers form and change attitudes toward food technologies. Earlier post hoc explanations suggest that evaluative conditioning can change consumer attitudes toward food technologies. The present study tests how evaluative conditioning can affect consumer acceptance of new food technologies. Furthermore, authors investigate whether evaluative conditioning is resistant to extinction after a two‐month period and whether the evaluative conditioning effect prevails in a product‐related context. Within an evaluative conditioning paradigm including between‐subjects control groups in addition to standard within‐subjects control conditions, participants were presented with three food technologies (conventional, enzyme, and genetic technology) paired with affectively positive, neutral, and negative pictures. Subsequent evaluative measurements revealed that evaluative conditioning can explain attitude change toward food technologies when affective pictures are used. Furthermore, results indicate that evaluative conditioning is resistant to extinction after two months and acquired evaluative conditioning effect spills over in a product‐related context.