The mere exposure effect represents a psychological phenomenon in which repeated exposure to a particular stimulus leads to an increased preference for it. This effect, rooted deeply in psychology and especially relevant to social psychology, was brought into prominence by Robert Zajonc in the 1960s. Zajonc’s research illuminated how familiarity with an object or concept cultivates a feeling of preference, effectively encapsulating the familiarity principle.
One fundamental concept behind the mere exposure effect is perceptual fluency. This is the ease with which a stimulus is processed because of prior exposure. Perceptual fluency increases with each encounter, rendering the stimulus more favorable in the individual’s perception.
Cognition plays a significant role in the mere exposure effect. Though the increase in positive affect toward a stimulus may occur without conscious cognition, the cognitive processes are still influenced indirectly via memory and familiarity.
The Role of Affect in Mere-Exposure Effect
Affect, or the experience of feeling or emotion, is integral to mere-exposure. Studies indicate that the mere-exposure effect can enhance positive affect or diminish negative feelings toward a stimulus. Consequently, attraction and preferences can be subtly influenced by the frequency of an individual’s encounters with a particular stimulus.
The relationship between affect and cognition is crucial to understanding mere-exposure. Cognition refers to the mental processes involved in gaining knowledge and comprehension. When someone becomes more familiar with a stimulus through repeated exposure, it not only affects their perception but can also alter their affective response.
Scientific inquiry continues to explore whether affective responses precede cognitive processing or vice versa. However, cognitive models have suggested that affect may not always be necessary for the mere-exposure effect to occur.
Research and Evidence
Experimental psychologist Gustav Fechner conducted the first documented studies on the effect in 1876. Edward B. Titchener also documented the effect and described the “glow of warmth” felt in the presence of something familiar; however, his hypothesis was rejected when results revealed that the enhancement of preferences for objects was not dependent on the individual’s subjective perceptions of how familiar the objects were. The rejection of Titchener’s idea sparked additional research and the formation of current theory.
Social psychologist Robert Zajonc is the single figure best recognized for developing the concept of the mere-exposure effect. Prior to performing his investigation, he noticed that all species respond with fear/avoidance to novel stimuli.
Each consecutive exposure to the novel stimulus decreases the observing organism’s fear and increases its interest. After frequent exposure, the watching organism will develop a fondness for the previously unfamiliar stimuli. This observation prompted research and creation of the mere-exposure effect.
Zajonc
In the 1960s, Robert Zajonc’s laboratory experiments demonstrated that simply exposing participants to a familiar stimulus caused them to rate it higher than other, similar stimuli that had never been presented before. He initially focused on language and word frequency.
He observed that overall, positive terms were used more than negative ones. Later, he demonstrated similar outcomes for liking, pleasantness, and forced-choice measures using a wide range of stimuli, including polygons, drawings, pictures of emotions, nonsense words, and idiographs.
In 1980, Zajonc presented the affective primacy theory, which states that affective reactions, such as liking, can be “elicited with minimal stimulus input.” Zajonc used mere-exposure experiments to test the emotional-primacy hypothesis, which states that emotive judgments are produced without regard for preceding cognitive processes.
He tested this hypothesis by presenting repeated stimuli to participants at suboptimal thresholds, causing them to show no conscious awareness or recognition of the repeated stimuli (when asked if they had seen the image, responses were at chance), but still exhibiting affective bias toward the repeatedly exposed stimuli. Zajonc compared the findings of primes that were exposed longer, allowing for conscious awareness, versus stimuli that were displayed so short that subjects did not show conscious awareness. He discovered that primes exhibited quickly and not recognized elicited faster reactions to liking than primes shown at conscious levels.
In one experiment, two groups of subjects were briefly exposed to Chinese characters. Participants were then informed that the symbols represented adjectives and asked to judge whether they had positive or negative meanings.
The symbols that the participants had previously seen were consistently ranked higher than those they had not. In a similar experiment, participants were asked to describe their emotions after the experiment rather than rate the symbols’ implications. Members in the group who had seen particular characters several times reported being in better moods than those who hadn’t.
According to Zajonc, the mere-exposure effect can occur without conscious thought, and “preferences need no inferences”. This claim has sparked much investigation into the link between cognition and affect.
His explanation is that if preferences (or attitudes) were based solely on information units with affect attached, persuasion would be rather simple. He contends that this is not the case: such straightforward persuasion strategies have failed terribly.
Zajonc says that emotive responses to stimuli occur significantly faster than cognitive ones, and they are frequently made with far greater certainty. He claims that thought (cognition) and feeling (affect) are distinct, and that neither cognition nor affect is free of the other:
“the form of experience that we came to call feeling accompanies all cognitions, that it arises early in the process of registration and retrieval, albeit weakly and vaguely, and that it derives from a parallel, separate, and partly independent system in the organism.”
Goetzinger
In 1968, at Oregon State University, Charles Goetzinger experimented with the mere-exposure effect in his class. Goetzinger had a pupil arrive to class in a huge black bag, only his feet visible. The black bag was on a table in the rear of the classroom. Goetzinger’s experiment was designed to see if the students treated the black bag in accordance with Zajonc’s mere-exposure effect. His hypothesis was confirmed.
The students in the class initially reacted negatively to the black bag, but with time, they became curious and, finally, friendly. This experiment confirms Zajonc’s mere-exposure effect; by simply presenting the black bag to the students repeatedly, their attitudes were changed; as Zajonc states,
“mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his attitude toward it.”
Bornstein
A 1989 meta-analysis of 208 experiments showed that the mere-exposure effect is strong and consistent, with an effect size of r=0.26. This study discovered that the effect is strongest when unfamiliar stimuli are shown briefly.
Mere exposure often has a maximal effect at 10-20 presentations, and some research even shows that liking may decrease after a longer sequence of exposures. People tend to like a music more after hearing it a few times, but repeated repetitions can lessen this liking.
A delay between exposure and measurement of liking appears to amplify the effect. The effect is weaker on youngsters, as well as on sketches and paintings, when compared to other stimuli. According to one social psychology experiment, being exposed to people we detest at first increases our distaste for them.
Application in Advertising
Advertisers leverage this psychological phenomenon to enhance consumer preferences towards specific products or brands. Repeated exposure to an advertisement increases consumers’ familiarity with the advertised stimulus, subsequently influencing decision-making when choosing between competing products.
A study conducted in 2007 examined the mere-exposure effect using banner adverts on a computer screen. College-aged students were asked to read an article on a computer while banner advertisements appeared at the top of the screen. The results revealed that students exposed to the “test” banner scored the ad higher than other commercials presented less frequently or not at all.
“Our results suggest that the fluency resulting from frequent passive exposure and the consequent spontaneous affective reaction provide a crucial link between exposure and positive impressions. Such spontaneous affect influenced evaluative judgments through a more complex process, likely by coloring the interpretation of the fluency experience and the nature of resulting metacognitions relating fluency with liking,”
the authors wrote.
Key components of a successful application in advertising appear to involve:
- Frequency: How often an audience encounters the advertisement
- Variation: Introducing slight modifications to the ad to prevent wear out
- Content Quality: Ensuring the ad is professionally crafted to elicit positive reactions
In media, the effect is capitalized upon across various platforms, from traditional TV commercials to digital advertising. Research has shown that even subliminal exposure, where consumers are not fully aware of the stimulus, can positively affect their preferences.
Influence on Art and Aesthetics
Studies have shown that individuals tend to develop a preference for paintings and music that they have been exposed to repeatedly. This effect suggests that familiarity plays a crucial role in the appraisal process. It is not merely that audiences enjoy what they know; rather, the exposure cultivates a kind of perceptual fluency that translates to favorability.
For example, museums, authors, and publishers promote and sustain artistic canons by broadcasting pictures to the public on a regular basis. The frequent presentation of images to the public without direct knowledge or recall makes mere exposure a powerful tool for canon preservation.
Cultural exposure to certain forms of art also leaves an imprint on the aesthetic preferences of a community. Research illustrates how communal standards and repetitive exposure to specific artistic styles can influence an individual’s evaluation. Whether it’s the tendency to favor traditional over contemporary art, or classical music over more modern genres, the principle of mere exposure interweaves with cultural expectations to shape one’s artistic and musical taste.
Language and Communication
Familiarity increases affinity towards languages and specific linguistic elements such as words or Chinese characters. Through repeated exposure, individuals may develop a preference for certain languages, including those they are not fluent in.
Studies suggest that repeated exposure to a foreign language’s phonemes and characters, even with minimal understanding, can pave the way for language acquisition. This preference through familiarity extends to individual words, with adjectives often becoming favored based on their frequency in exposure rather than their semantic meaning.
In communication, familiarity garnered from the mere-exposure effect can shape how messages are received. Repeatedly encountering particular communication styles may also lead to increased familiarity and preference, potentially reducing prejudice against unfamiliar accents or dialects.
This effect is utilized in persuasion, where the repeated presentation of an argument or slogan can lead to greater acceptance and influence. The exposure frequency can turn neutral or even slightly negative attitudes into more positive ones, suggesting that adjectives used consistently in messaging may become more persuasive over time.
Criticisms and Limitations
This phenomenon is not without various criticisms and limitations. Repeated exposure does not always lead to increased liking, as evidenced by the findings of Chow et al.
Another criticism is that the effect is limited by boredom, as liking ratings decrease after a large number of exposures. Molet et al. challenged the validity of the perceptual fluency/attributional paradigm, which implies that the impact is driven by greater processing fluency.
Some authors argue that increased exposure may not always enhance liking, especially if individuals develop a negative attitude due to over-familiarity. Moreover, certain psychological models suggest that the effect can be influenced by factors such as the observer’s mood, the context of exposure, and the inherent properties of the stimulus itself, which can limit the generalizability of the mere-exposure effect.
Other critics point out that mere exposure may sometimes lead to the misattribution of familiarity, where a person believes they have previous encounters with a novel stimulus. Furthermore, the formation of a negative attitude from repeated exposure to an initially neutral or disliked object calls into question the universality of the mere-exposure effect. This suggests that perception is not always linearly enhanced by frequency of exposure, challenging the phenomenon’s predictive power.
Future Directions and AI
Research in the psychology of the mere exposure effect has predominantly focused on how humans develop preferences through repeated exposure. The extension of this research into the realm of artificial intelligence (AI) opens new avenues for understanding how AI can be designed to simulate or even improve upon human-like preference formation.
AI systems may be programmed to predict user preferences by analyzing patterns of engagement. New experiences may be curated based on successful applications of the mere exposure effect, suggesting that repeated exposure to content in AI-driven platforms could lead to an increased preference for such content, paralleling human psychological responses.
The potential evolution of AI in this context lies in the capacity for machine learning algorithms to recognize user preferences with subtle exposure to various stimuli. This capability could prove beneficial in environments where human-AI interaction is predicated on the AI’s ability to anticipate user needs and preferences, bolstering the user experience without overt or conscious recognition by the user.
Furthermore, they may use the mere exposure effect to optimize advertising strategies and content recommendations. AI could apply findings from research to tailor user interactions that maximize comfort and familiarity, potentially increasing user satisfaction and engagement.
References:
- Bornstein, Robert F. (1989). Exposure and affect: Overview and meta-analysis of research, 1968-1987. Psychological Bulletin. 106 (2): 265–289. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.106.2.265
- Chow, Jason, K., et al (2022). Absence of a mere-exposure effect in older and younger adults.. Psychology and Aging, doi: 10.1037/pag0000702
- Cutting, J. E. (2006). The Mere Exposure Effect and Aesthetic Preference. In P. Locher, C. Martindale, & L. Dorfman (Eds.), New directions in aesthetics, creativity and the arts (pp. 33–46). Baywood Publishing Co.
- Fang, Xiang; Singh, Surendra; Ahluwalia, Rohini (2007). An Examination of Different Explanations for the Mere Exposure Effect. Journal of Consumer Research. 34: 97–103. doi:10.1086/513050
- Grimes, Anthony; Kitchen, Phillip J. (2007). Researching mere exposure effects to advertising: Theoretical foundations and methodological implications. International Journal of Market Research. 49 (2): 191–221
- Molet, M., Craddock, P., Osroff, A. J., Li, P., Livingston, T. L., & Miller, R. R. (2021). Mere Exposure Effect Is Sometimes Insensitive to Mood Inductions. Experimental psychology, 68(2), 81–93.
- S. P. Fan, Z. Liberman, B. Keysar, K. D. Kinzler. The Exposure Advantage: Early Exposure to a Multilingual Environment Promotes Effective Communication. Psychological Science, 2015; doi: 10.1177/0956797615574699
- Zajonc, Robert B. (1968). Attitudinal Effects Of Mere Exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 9 (2, Pt.2): 1–27. doi: 10.1037/h0025848
- Zajonc, R.B. (February 1980). Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist. 35 (2): 151–175. doi: 10.1037/0003-066x.35.2.151
- Zajonc, R.B. (December 2001). Mere Exposure: A Gateway to the Subliminal. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 10 (6): 224–228. doi: 10.1111/1467-8721.00154
Last Updated on April 5, 2024