Dissociations between Learning Phenomena do Not Necessitate Multiple Learning Processes: Mere Instructions about Upcoming Stimulus Presentations Differentially Influence Liking and Expectancy

Prior research showed that the degree of statistical contingency between the presence of stimuli moderates changes in expectancies about the presence of those stimuli (i.e., expectancy learning) but not changes in the liking of those stimuli (i.e., evaluative conditioning). This dissociation is typically interpreted as evidence for dual process models of associative learning. We tested an alternative account according to which both types of learning rely on a single process propositional learning mechanism but reflect different kinds of propositional beliefs. In line with the idea that changes in liking reflect beliefs about stimulus co-occurrences whereas changes in expectancy reflect beliefs about stimulus contingency, we found that evaluative ratings depended only on instructions about whether a stimulus would co-occur with a positive or negative stimulus whereas expectancy ratings were influenced also by instructions about individual stimulus presentations.