Evaluative conditioning with foods as CSs and body shapes as USs: No evidence for sex differences, extinction, or overshadowing

Two experiments were conducted using a picture–picture procedure to investigate the functional characteristics of evaluative conditioning. Images of foods were used as cue stimuli while images of body shapes were used as reinforcing stimuli. Foods paired with obese body shapes were rated more negatively than foods that had been paired with normal body shapes and the size of this evaluative conditioning effect did not differ between men and women. In Experiment 1 repeated presentation of the foods alone after training and before test did not reduce the size of the evaluative conditioning effect. In Experiment 2 there was no difference in the size of the evaluative conditioning effect between cues that were trained alone or in compound with another cue. The absence of extinction and overshadowing accords with the idea that in some cases evaluative conditioning is based on a learning mechanism sensitive only to the co-occurrence of stimuli and not to the contingency between them.