Linking Value (Evaluative Conditioning)
Your brain rates things by what they sit next to. Marketers exploit this. So can you.
Grounded in the research on Evaluative conditioning (Wikipedia)
What linking value actually is
Linking value is evaluative conditioning: you start liking or disliking something just because it kept showing up next to something you already feel about. A neutral thing (a brand, a name, a face) gets paired with a loaded thing (a hot model, a sad word, a winning vibe) and the feeling bleeds across. It is attitude change by mere co-occurrence. No logic, no argument, no decision. Just proximity doing the work on your gut.
The science that proved it
Staats and Staats, 1958. They flashed nationality names (Dutch, Swedish) paired with words. One nationality got 'gift, sacred, happy', the other got 'bitter, ugly, failure'. People then rated the positive-paired nationality as more pleasant. Nothing changed about the nationalities. Only their neighbors changed. This is Pavlovian classical conditioning aimed at LIKING instead of salivating. Pavlov rang a bell with food until the bell alone triggered the dog. Same machinery, pointed at your taste.