Evaluative conditioning as a source gut feelings and its potential for behavioral nudging

Abstract

The theme of limited resources pervades the mental health landscape. Practitioners often lack adequate resources to provide interventions for all who could benefit from them, and potential beneficiaries often lack adequate cognitive, financial, and temporal resources to make use of them. Even under rare conditions of bounty, many intensive interventions show small, fleeting effects. Such a landscape begs a space for behavioral nudges: cheap, easily implementable tweaks to people's decision environments aimed at improving health while preserving autonomy. Although existing nudges can be effective, they have their own limitations. Here we explore the case for Evaluative Conditioning (EC) as a largely overlooked yet potentially effective kind of behavioral nudge that can reap nudges' benefits while addressing some of their limitations.