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 the same differentiation principle applies to co-occurrence-based attitude formation, also known as Evaluative Conditioning. This form of attitude formation describes the phenomenon that attitudes are influenced by positive or negative stimuli that have co-occurred with attitude object, but which are not inherent attributes of the attitude object itself. Across 7 experiments (N = 1611), we consistently found that co-occurrence-based attitude formation is guided by the same differentiation principle as attribute-based attitude formation. Specifically, participants' attitudes toward unknown brands were most strongly influenced by positive or negative stimuli that distinctly co-occurred with a specific brand, and that differentiated that brand from previously encountered ones. Stimuli that redundantly co-occurred with multiple brands had weaker influences on brand attitudes. The results further suggest that differentiation operates at the learning stage during which distinct stimulus co-occurrences enjoy a processing advantage. We discuss the present findings' theoretical and practical implications for attitude formation and identify differentiation as a possible cause of biased attitudes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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纯粹共生的态度是由差异引导的。

人们通常通过检查和比较其属性来形成对物体，个人或群体的态度。这种基于属性的态度形成遵循一种区分原则：人们是喜欢还是不喜欢某个姿势对象，这取决于该对象将其与其他对象区分开的属性。通常会抵消先前遇到的姿态对象多余的属性。我们测试了相同的区分原则是否适用于基于同现的态度形成，也称为评估条件。这种形式的态度形成描述了一种现象，即态度受与态度对象共存的正或负刺激的影响，但不是态度对象本身的固有属性。在7个实验中（N = 1611），我们一致地发现，基于共生的态度形成与基于属性的态度形成遵循相同的区分原则。具体来说，参与者对未知品牌的态度受到与特定品牌明显共存的正面或负面刺激的最大影响，并使该品牌与先前遇到的品牌有所不同。与多个品牌重复出现的刺激对品牌态度的影响较小。结果进一步表明，分化在学习阶段起作用，在此阶段，不同的刺激共生享有加工优势。我们讨论了目前的发现对态度形成的理论和实践意义，并确定了差异是态度偏差的可能原因。