Pairing a neutral object with a valenced stimulus often results in the former acquiring the valence of the latter (i.e., the Evaluative Conditioning [EC] effect). However, the pairing of an object with an affective stimulus is not always indicative of valence similarity. Three preregistered experiments (total = 1052) explored EC effects when people were explicitly informed that pairings do not reflect valence similarity. In Experiment 1, informing participants that the paired stimuli are unrelated and therefore irrelevant to each other, reduced but did not eliminate EC effects. In Experiment 2, exposure to pairings defined as irrelevant still produced an EC effect, even when participants were asked to resist being influenced by the pairings. In Experiment 3, irrelevant pairings still produced an EC effect, even when alternative diagnostic evaluative information was provided. The results constrain existing theoretical models of EC and suggest that EC effects are robust.

中文翻译：

---

不相关配对对评价反应的影响

将中性物体与价刺激配对通常会导致前者获得后者的价（即评价性条件作用[EC]效应）。然而，物体与情感刺激的配对并不总是表明效价相似性。三个预先注册的实验（总计 = 1052）探索了当人们被明确告知配对不反映价态相似性时的 EC 效应。在实验 1 中，告知参与者配对刺激不相关，因此彼此无关，减少了 EC 效应，但并未消除。在实验 2 中，即使参与者被要求抵制被配对的影响，暴露于被定义为不相关的配对仍然会产生 EC 效应。在实验 3 中，即使提供了替代的诊断评估信息，不相关的配对仍然会产生 EC 效应。结果限制了现有的 EC 理论模型，表明 EC 效应是稳健的。