(Why) Do Big Five Personality Traits Moderate Evaluative Conditioning? The Role of US Extremity and Pairing Memory

Abstract

Evaluative conditioning (EC), the change in liking towards a stimulus due to its co-occurrence with another stimulus, is a key effect in social and cognitive psychology. Despite its prominence, research on personality differences in EC has been scarce. First research found stronger EC among individuals high in Neuroticism and Agreeableness. However, it remains unclear how robust these moderations are and why they occur. In a high-powered preregistered EC experiment with a heterogeneous sample (N = 511), we found a robust moderation by Agreeableness. Individuals high in Agreeableness also showed more extreme evaluations of the unconditioned stimuli (USs) and more accurate memory for the stimulus pairings, which both in combination accounted for the moderation by Agreeableness. The moderation by Neuroticism was considerably weaker and depended on the type of analysis, but was independent of US evaluations and pairing memory. Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness did not moderate EC. Our findings imply that Agreeableness-based personality differences in EC reflect differences in the affective and cognitive processes presumed in current propositional and memory-based EC theories. Furthermore, they offer important insights into the Big Five and interindividual differences in stimulus evaluation, memory, and learning.