Jan De Houwer

Mailing address: Jan De Houwer
Ghent University
Henri Dunantlaan 2
B-9000 Ghent
Belgium
Phone: 0032 9 264 64 45
Fax: 0032 9 264 64 89
E-mail: Jan.DeHouwer@UGent.be
 


SHORT CV

I received my Master and PhD degree in Psychology from the University of Leuven (Belgium). In 1998, I accepted a position as Lecturer at Southampton University. After three years, I returned to Belgium to become Senior Lecturer at Ghent University where I became Professor in 2004.

My research concerns the manner in which spontaneous (automatic) preferences are learned and can be measured. Regarding the learning of preferences, I focus on the role of stimulus pairings (associative learning). With regard to the measurement of preferences, I developed new reaction time measures and examined the processes underlying various measures. In 2008, I received a 7 year Methusalem grant to continue my research on these topics (see http://www.implicit.ugent.be/ ). Other research interests include associative learning, stimulus-response compatibility, and attentional bias.

I (co-)authored more than 100 publications in international journals including Psychological Bulletin, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes. I am currently editor of the journal “Cognition and Emotion” and have fulfilled editorial duties for Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Experimental Psychology, and Journal of Behaviour Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.

 

CONTENT OF SITE:

-         In press paper + download preprints / chapters

-         Description of research topics

-         Teaching and admin

-         Editorial Duties

-         Short Curriculum Vitae

Download full CV  here (last update 23 December 2009) including a reference to all my publications. For reprints, please see below or email me at :  Jan.DeHouwer@UGent.be


Research


In Press papers + Download preprints / chapters

 

In press papers:

- De Houwer, J., & Vandorpe, S. (in press). Using the Implicit Association Test as a measure of causal learning does not eliminate effects of rule learning. Experimental Psychology. Click here

            - Hofmann, W., De Houwer, J., Perugini, M., Baeyens, F., & Crombez, G. (in press). Evaluative conditioning in humans: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin. Click here

- Krieglmeyer, R., Deutsch, R., De Houwer, J., & De Raedt, R. (in press). Being moved: Valence activates approach-avoidance behavior independent of evaluation and approach-avoidance intentions.

Psychological Science.

- Tibboel, H., De Houwer, J., & Field, M. (in press). Reduced attentional blink for alcohol-related stimuli in heavy social drinkers. Journal of Psychopharmacology. Click here

- Vogt, J., De Houwer, J., Moors, A., Van Damme, S., & Crombez, G. (in press). The automatic orienting of attention to goal-relevant stimuli. Acta Psychologica. Click here

 

Chapters + Difficult to find papers:

-         NEW: De Houwer, J. (in press). Evaluative conditioning: A review of procedure knowledge and mental process theories. In T. R. Schachtman & S. Reilly. Applications of learning and conditioning. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.  Click here

-         NEW: De Houwer, J., & Moors, A. (in press). Implicit measures: Similarities and differences. In B. Gawronski, & B. K. Payne (Eds.), Handbook of implicit social cognition: Measurement, theory, and applications. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Click here

-         De Houwer, J. (2009). Conditioning as a source of liking: There is nothing simple about it. In Wänke, M. (Ed.). Frontiers of Social Psychology: The Social Psychology of Consumer Behavior. New York: Psychology Press. Click here

-         De Houwer, J. (2009). Comparing measures of attitudes at the procedural and functional level. In R. Petty, R. H. Fazio, & P. Brinol (Eds.), Attitudes: Insights from the new implicit measures. Erlbaum. Click here

-         De Houwer, J. (2009). The propositional approach to associative learning as an alternative for association formation models. Learning & Behavior, 37, 1-20. Click here

-         De Houwer, J. (2007). A conceptual and theoretical analysis of evaluative conditioning. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 10, 230-241. Click here

-         De Houwer, J., & Moors, A. (2007). How to define and examine the implicitness of implicit measures. In B. Wittenbrink & N. Schwarz (Eds.). Implicit measures of  attitudes: Procedures and controversies (pp. 179-194). NewYork: Guilford Press. Click here

-         De Houwer, J. (2006). What are implicit measures and why are we using them. In R. W. Wiers & A. W. Stacy (Eds.), The handbook of implicit cognition and addiction (pp. 11-28). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishers. Click  here (BIG FILE)

-         De Houwer, J., Vandorpe, S., & Beckers, T. (2005). On the role of controlled cognitive processes in human associative learning. In A. Wills (Ed.), New directions in human associative learning (pp. 41-63). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Click  here (BIG FILE)

-         De Houwer, J. (2003). A structural analysis of indirect measures of attitudes. In J. Musch & K.C. Klauer (Eds.), The Psychology of Evaluation: Affective Processes in Cognition and Emotion (pp. 219-244). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Click  here (BIG FILE)

 

Automatic Affective Processing:

Main publications on this topic:

- De Houwer, J., Teige-Mocigemba, S., Spruyt, A., & Moors, A. (2009). Implicit measures: A normative analysis and review. Psychological Bulletin, 135, 347-368. Click here

- De Houwer, J., & Moors, A. (in press). Implicit measures: Similarities and differences. In B. Gawronski, & B. K. Payne (Eds.), Handbook of implicit social cognition: Measurement, theory, and applications. New York, NY: Guilford Press. Click here

- De Houwer, J., & De Bruycker, E. (2007). The Implicit Association Test outperforms the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task as a measure of interindividual differences in attitudes. British Journal of Social Psychology, 46, 401-421. Click here

 

(Extrinsic) Affective Simon task
In 1998, I introduced an affective variant of the Simon paradigm (De Houwer & Eelen, 1998). In affective Simon experiments, stimuli are presented that differ with regard to their valence but also with regard to a second, non-affective feature. Participants have to process the relevant feature in order to respond with a pre-determined positive or negative word, while ignoring the valence of the stimuli. In a number of experiments, we observed that responses were influenced by the match between the valence of the correct response and the (to-be-ignored) valence of the presented stimuli (De Houwer & Eelen, 1998; De Houwer et al., 2001). I also created a variant in which approach and avoidance responses are used (De Houwer et al., 2001) and a semantic variant of the Simon paradigm that can be used to measure and study automatic semantic processing (De Houwer, 1998; Duyck & De Houwer, in press). More recently, I developed the extrinsic affective Simon task (EAST) (De Houwer, 2003; De Houwer et al., 2004). In these EAST studies, participants see white words that need to be classified on the basis of stimulus valence and coloured words that need to be classified on the basis of colour. One can estimate the attitude toward a stimulus by presenting that stimulus on the coloured trials and comparing the time needed to give the extrinsically positive response (i.e., the response that has to be made to positive white word) with the time needed to give an extrinsically negative response (i.e., the response that has to be made to negative white words). If on those coloured trials, the extrinsically positive response is given more quickly than the extrinsically negative response, one can infer that the stimulus presented on those trials is positive. If the reverse is true, than the stimulus is negative. Although there have been some studies supporting the validity of interindividual differences in EAST effects as a valid measure of interindividual differences in attitudes, studies at my lab suggest that of the EAST fails as a measure of interindividual differences in attitudes (De Houwer & De Bruycker, 2007, BJP). There are some variants of the EAST that seem to provide better measures of interindividual differences in attitudes (De Houwer & De Bruycker, 2007, IJP; 2007, JBTEP) and the (E)AST still seems to work well at the item or group level (e.g., Voss et al., 2003, Exp Psy). I was awarded a four year research on the EAST that ended in December 2006.

Here you can download an Inquisit program for a standard EAST experiment (similar to Experiment 1 of my EAST paper).
(be sure to enter "1" or "2" as subject code because this determines which counterbalancing condition will be applied)

Affective priming
Together with Dirk Hermans and Adriaan Spruyt, I also conducted a number of experiments on the affective priming effect (De Houwer et al., 1998, 2001, 2002; De Houwer & Randell,  2002, 2004; Hermans et al., 1994, 1996, 2001, 2003; Spruyt et al., 2002, 2004a, 2004b, in press a, in press b, in press c). At Southampton, I had a one-year ESRC on affective priming of pronunciation responses. Together with Agnes Moors, I conducted experiments with regard to the automatic processing of motivational valence using the affective priming and affective Simon paradigm (Moors & De Houwer, 2001, 2004, 2005; Moors et al., 2005). Agnes and I were awarded a two year research grant to continue this research and Agnes has now been awarded a FWO post-doc position to continue this research. Our aim is to examine the automatic processing of other appraisal components (see Moors & De Houwer, 2005). Adriaan is working in my lab as a postdoc since October 2006. We recently obtained data which suggest that affective (and semantic) priming depends on whether participants have the goal to evaluate stimuli (see Spruyt et al., 2007, 2009). For a review of affective priming research, see our paper in Psychological Bulleting (De Houwer et al., 2009).

IAT
I have also been conducting experiments that look at the processes involved in the Implicit Association Test (De Houwer, 2001; De Houwer et al., 2005). This research explores the links between stimulus-response compatibility tasks and the IAT (De Houwer, 2003). I also wrote a paper about the strengths and limitations of the IAT as a tool for studying dysfunctional associations in psychopathology (De Houwer, 2002). In 2005 (De Houwer et al., 2005), I argue that the IAT can reflect several types of similarity, not only similarity with regard to meaning (e.g., attitudes, stereotypes) or salience, but also similarity with regard to other features such as perceptual features. More recently, I have looked at the effects of propositional knowledge on IAT effects (De Houwer, 2006; De Houwer et al., 2007). For a review of IAT research, see our paper in Psychological Bulletin (De Houwer et al., 2009).

Workshops
On December 16th, 1998, Dirk and I organized a workshop on automatic affective processing. This workshop resulted in a special issue of Cognition and Emotion (De Houwer & Hermans, 2001).  Together with Olivier Corneille (UCL, Belgium), we also organized a second meeting which took place in May 2001. Together with Peter de Jong en Geert Crombez, I organized a workshop on the use of indirect measures of attitudes and other associations in clinical and health psychology. This took place in Diksmuide (Belgium) on 25, 26, and 27 August 2003. In July of 2004, Reinout Wiers and I organized a meeting in Ghent on Implicit Cognition and Health Behavior. In April 2005, Juliane Degner, Dirk Wentura, and I have organizing a meeting on the EAST in Jena, Germany.


Using implicit measures
In recent research, I've been involved in projects where tasks such as the EAST and IAT are used to examine the relevance of automatic (implicit) attitudes and associations in clinical psychology (e.g., social phobia: Tanner et al., 2006; depression: De Raedt et al., 2006; Franck et al., in press), health psychology (e.g.,  alcohol abuse: De Houwer et al., 2004; obesitas: Craeyenest et al., 2005; smoking: De Houwer, Custers, & De Clercq, 2006), consumer psychology (Vantomme et al., 2005, 2006), and adult attatchment (Dewitte & De Houwer, 2007, in press; Dewitte et al., in press).  Reinout Wiers, Bethany Teachman, and myself have just completed a special issue of Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry on the topic op implicit cognitive processes in psychopathology. Geert Crombez and I have been awarded a (big) grant from Ghent University to explore the causal role of  implicit attitudes and attentional biases in psychopathology. This research started in 2006. I also received an FWO research community grant to organize meetings on this topic. The first of these meetings took place in December 2007 in Ghent. I was award holder of a five (3+2) year grant on the use of indirect measures in the context of attachment research. This research was conducted by Marieke Dewitte, in collaboration with Ann Buysse.

Chapters

I completed a number of chapters in which I provide a conceptual analysis of implicit measures. The first provided a structural analysis of implicit measures and was published in 2003 in a book by Musch and Klauer. Click  here (BIG FILE) for a copy of this chapter. The second is called "What are implicit measures and why are we using them?" that has appeared in the Handbook of Implicit Cognition and Addiction, edited by Reinout Wiers and Alan Stacy. It provides an answer to the questions posed in the title and should be particularly useful as an introduction to the literature on implicit measures of attitudes and cognitions, especially for researchers who want to start using these measures in more applied contexts. Click  here (BIG FILE) for a copy of this chapter and here for a short comment that provides the essense of my ideas about what implicit measures and indirect measures are. Related to this, Agnes Moors and I published a paper in Psychological Bulletin in which we present an analysis of the concept "automaticity" (Moors & De Houwer, 2006). I have also written a chapter for a book of Wittenbrink and Schwarz that applies our analysis of automaticity to implicit measures. Click here for a copy of that chapter. There is a chapter for a book by Petty et al. that extends the structural analysis I presented in 2003. Click here for a copy of that chapter. I have published a conceptual and review paper about implicit measures in Psychological Bulletin (De Houwer et al., 2009) and have just finished a chapter that deals with how different implicit measures differ from each other (Click here ).

 

See CV for all references.


Evaluative Conditioning:

Main publications on this topic:

- Hofmann, W., De Houwer, J., Perugini, M., Baeyens, F., & Crombez, G. (in press). Evaluative conditioning in humans: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin. Click here

- De Houwer, J. (2007). A conceptual and theoretical analysis of evaluative conditioning. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 10, 230-241. Click here

- De Houwer, J., Baeyens, F., & Field, A. P. (2005). Associative learning of likes and dislikes: Some current controversies and possible ways forward. Cognition and Emotion, 19, 161-174. Click here

- De Houwer, J., Thomas, S., & Baeyens, F. (2001). Associative learning of likes and dislikes: A review of 25 years of research on human evaluative conditioning. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 853–869. Click here

 

Evaluative conditioning refers to a change in the evaluation of a neutral stimulus (CS) that occurs after the neutral stimulus has been paired with a (positive or negative) affective stimulus (US). Sarah Thomas, Frank Baeyens, and I published a review paper on this topic in Psychological  Bulletin (De Houwer et al., 2001). I was awarded a Unilever Research grant (1999-2000) to look at applications of evaluative conditioning in a product development context and a ESRC-ROPA (2001-2002) grant to look at associative transfer of non-evaluative stimulus properties (see Meersman et al., 2005). Andy Field and I have organized a symposium on evaluative conditioning during the Joint Meeting of the BPS and EPS, Leuven, April 9 2002, and Andy, Frank Baeyens and I organized a special interest meeting this topic, Le Lignely, Belgium, 27-29 May 2002. We have recently completed a special issue of Cognition and Emotion on the topic of evaluative conditioning that appeared in 2005. Recently, I did some studies on the usefulness of implicit measures of attitudes to measure changes in valence (De Houwer,  2006). I have completed an invited paper in which I provide a conceptual and theoretical analysis of evaluative conditioning (click here for a copy) and a chapter directed at consumer psychologists  (click here for a copy).

See CV for all references. 


Associative Learning:

Main publications on this topic:

- Mitchell, C. J., De Houwer, J., & Lovibond, P. F. (2009). The propositional nature of human associative learning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32, 183-198. Click here

- De Houwer, J. (2009). The propositional approach to associative learning as an alternative for association formation models. Learning & Behavior, 37, 1-20. Click here

- De Houwer, J., & Beckers, T. (2002). A review of recent developments in research and theory on human contingency learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55B, 289-310. Click here

 

I have conducted a series of experiments on cue competition in human contingency learning. A first series of studies showed that backward blocking depends on how the CSs are introduced to the participants (De Houwer et al., 2002). In a second paper (De Houwer, 2002), I showed that forward blocking occurs only when the blocked cue is explicitly represented as being absent during the elemental phase. This is problematic for associative models such as the Rescorla-Wagner and SOP models. I have also demonstrated higher-order retrospective revaluation in a number of studies (e.g., AB+ and BC+ followed by A- will not only affect ratings for B but also ratings for C; De Houwer, 2002a, 2002b). At the moment, Stefaan Vandorpe, Tom Beckers, and I are examining the role of deductive reasoning processes in human causal learning. I have also written an invited review about recent developments in research and theory on human contingency learning (De Houwer & Beckers, 2002), a chapter on the role of controlled cognitive processes in human associative learning (De Houwer et al., 2005) and a theoretical paper about the role of higher-order reasoning in cue competition (De Houwer et al., 2005). Tom has a paper in press JEP:General about reasoning in rats. I've recently started doing research on avoidance learning. The idea I want to test is whether avoidance behavior can function as a negative occasion setter, that is, as something that signals when a Sd-Sr will no longer be valid. For more information, see De Houwer, Crombez, and Baeyens (2005). I've received a grant to further test the occasion setting theory of avoidance learning. This research is currently conducted by Mieke Declercq who obtained her PhD in 2009. I wrote a large theoretical review paper on the merits of a propositional approach to learning (De Houwer, 2009). Chris Mitchell, Peter Lovibond, and I wrote another paper on this topic that was published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (Mitchell et al., 2009).

See CV for all references.


 Stimulus-Response Compatibility:

The Stroop effect was the topic of my Master thesis (completed in 1991). In a number of experiments, I tested the model of Stroop performance proposed by Glaser and Glaser. As a spin-off of my recent research on the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task, I've also written some papers on the role extrinsic (i.e., short-term) S-R associations in various SRC tasks (e.g., De Houwer, 2003, 2004; De Houwer et al., 2005).


Attentional bias:

I have been involved in a number of recent studies on attentional bias effects, mainly as a collaborator of Ernst Koster, Karin Mogg, and Brendan Bradley. More recently, Julia Vogt has been conducting research on the effects of goals on attentional bias (see Vogt et al., 2009). I’m also supervising the PhD of Helen Tibboel who is conducting research using the attentional blink paradigm (see Tibboel et al., 2009). 

 


 


Teaching, Graduate Supervision, and Admin 



Since October 2004, I'm a full professor. My main assignment is doing research. I do, however, teach the second year course on Learning Psychology. I am also supervising the PhD of Julia Vogt, Helen Tibboel, Katrien Vandenbosch, Evelien Bossuyt (with Agnes Moors), Tom Everaert (with Adriaan Spruyt), Jeffrey Dewinne, Sarah Opsomer (with Baptist Liefooghe), Hendrik Slabbinck (Department of Marketing; with Patrick Van Kenhove), and Riccardo Zanon (with Anne Gast) and have been the co-supervisor of the PhD of Tom Beckers (now a Senior Lecturer at the University of Amsterdam), Agnes Moors (who is now working as a post-doc in my lab), Tom Meersmans, Adriaan Spruyt (now a post-doc in my lab), Delphine Vantomme, Els De Bruycker, Stefaan Vandorpe, Marieke Dewitte (now a postdoc at my department), and Mieke Declercq (now a postdoc in my lab).

I’m head of the research group “Learning and Implicit processes” at Ghent University.
 
 



Editorial Duties


 

Current:

  • Co-editor (together with Dirk Hermans), Cognition & Emotion (2008 - 2012)
  • Member of the Editorial Board, Experimental Psychology (2002-...)
  • Member of the Editorial Board, Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry (2006-...)

Past

  • Associate Editor, Cognition & Emotion (2001-2006)
  • Editor-Designate (together with Dirk Hermans), Cognition & Emotion, 2007.
  • Associate Editor, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2005-2006)
  • Consulting Editor for Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (2005-2006)


Curriculum Vitae



 

  • 12-12-1968: Born in Beerse, Belgium
  • 1991: Master in Psychology, University of Leuven, Belgium
  • 1997: PhD in Psychology, University of Leuven, Belgium (under the supervision of Prof. Paul Eelen)
  • 1998: Lecturer in Psychology, University of Southampton, UK
  • 2001: Senior Lecturer, Ghent University, Belgium
  • 2004: Professor, Ghent University, Belgium
  • 2004: Awarded the prize of Laureate of the Royal Academy of Sciences (Flanders, Belgium)
  • 2006: Proximus for the Honorary Doctoral Degree awarded to Prof. Robert Rescorla.
  • 2007: Appointed as Co-editor of Cognition and Emotion (together with Dirk Hermans)
  • 2008: Awarded Methusalem financing

 

 Last modified  23 December 2009.