Evaluative conditioning of conflict aversiveness and its effects on adaptive control

Cognitive conflict is typically experienced as negative, which has been argued to drive adaptive behavior following a conflict. We tried to change the negative value of conflict using evaluative conditioning, and measured changes in conflict adaptation in a subsequent Stroop task (N = 416 Prolific participants, English native speakers from different countries). We did not find evidence for decreased conflict adaptation following positive evaluative conditioning of conflict. However, we also did not find evidence for the change of conflict evaluation measured with the affect misattribution procedure in the follow-up experiment (N = 70). Interestingly, the exploratory follow-up analysis showed that people with low goal motivation (as measured through BAS Drive) did show the expected effect. A memory test for the evaluative conditioning pairings and the follow-up experiment suggest that, although the affective value of conflict was difficult to change, people with low goal motivation experienced less difficulty remembering the association between conflict stimuli and positive pictures. Our findings show additional evidence that conflicts are inherently negative, however, there is no clear support for, or against, the affective signaling hypothesis, that is the idea that conflict negativity drives control adaptations.