Mere Exposure Effect: What It Is And How It Is Expressed In Psychology
Has it ever happened to you that you liked something (for example, a song) more and more the more you listened to it? Or even with someone? This has an explanation according to social psychology; it’s about the call Mere Exposure Effect.
The Mere Exposure Effect was discovered by Robert Boleslaw Zajonc, an American social psychologist. This effect consists of the more we are exposed to something, the more we will like it. However, some authors suggest that this only occurs when the initial attitude towards the stimulus or object is favorable.
In this articles we will learn about the origin of this effect, some of the conditions that will influence its occurrence and possible causes of its appearance.
The Mere Exposure Effect is a psychological phenomenon that consists of the fact that our liking for a certain stimulus or person increases as we expose ourselves more to it, that is, the more we expose ourselves, the more we will like it. This effect is typical of social psychology, which Sometimes also called the “principle of familiarity.”.
The mere exposure effect was initially described by RB Zajonc (1968); Zajonc presented his discovery, along with others, in a work dedicated to changing attitudes, in which he argued that attitudes are formed by the frequency with which we are exposed to a stimulus.
Zajonc’s mere exposure effect facilitated new avenues of research within the experimental psychology of emotion.
The works of RB Zajonc
Based on his work on the Mere Exposure Effect, Zajonc supports the hypothesis that “the mere repeated exposure of a subject to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the positive attitude towards this stimulus to increase.” This effect appears even when the stimulus conditions of presentation prevent its conscious identification.
Zajonc’s hypothesis involved a challenge to the theoretical positions of the time (1960s), and stated that attitudes could be formed simply from the frequency with which a stimulus is presented.
In any case, social psychology researchers, at that time, already sensed that The more familiar we are with a stimulus, the more likely our attitude toward it will be positive or favorable.
Experimental procedure
To study the Mere Exposure Effect experimentally, we proceeded to expose the subjects to affectively our stimuli for very short times; After this presentation, the subject was shown various new stimuli with similar characteristics, among which the stimuli exposed during the first phase were interspersed.
The Mere Exposure Effect became evident when the subject made significantly more positive evaluations of the initially exposed objects than of the set of stimuli that were presented for the first time in the final evaluation phase.
Factors that determine it
There are several factors that determine the Mere Exposure Effect:
1. Type of stimulus
The effect is favorably induced with stimuli of all kinds: words, images, facial expressions, ideograms, polygons, etc.
However, if abstract figures are used exclusively, it does not occur, or if it does occur, it is subtle.
The effect is greater with complex than simple stimuli; this phenomenon It has been shown in various studies.
3. Exhibition number
The greater the number of exposures, the greater the effect; however, it is not a linear effect; After 10 or 20 exposures, the changes that occur are minor.
To illustrate this, Zajonc (1972) referred to a logarithmic relationship that increases until reaching a “ceiling effect”. Other researchers refer to a relationship that can be represented in the shape of an inverted U.
4. Sequence of the exhibition
The Mere Exposure Effect will vary depending on whether the stimuli used are the same or whether they vary; Although there are few studies carried out on this and the results are diverse, it is known that studies that have used heterogeneous (diverse) stimuli to produce the mere exposure effect provide less robust results.
5. Duration of exposure
There are few studies that have compared the effect of stimulus duration when producing the Mere Mxposition Effect. A specific author, Hamid (1973), used an inverted U to explain the relationship between duration and the effect obtained, based on his studies.
6. Stimulus recognition
The fact that the stimulus is familiar to the person (that is, that the stimulus is “recognized”) is not necessary for the Mere Exposure Effect to occur, and this has been demonstrated by various studies. There are even studies that suggest that recognition or familiarity reduces the effect.
7. Interval between exposure and test
Here there is disparity of opinions and results ; While there are some studies that do not find changes in relation to whether the interval between test and exposure is a few minutes or several weeks, other studies affirm that an increase in the Mere Exposure Effect occurs when the test phase is delayed after the initial exposure.
In more current studies, Zajonc (2000) believes that the Mere Exposure Effect is not mediated by subjective factors (for example, by the familiarity of the stimulus, as we have commented), but by the “objective history of exposures”; in fact, the mere exposure effect is more consistent under subliminal conditions. The author proposes the possibility that the effect may be mediated by some type of classical conditioning.
Thus, in the Mere Exposure Effect, repeated exposure to certain stimuli could be understood as a conditioned stimulus (CS), while the response preference would be the conditioned response (CR). This CR is analogous to the unconditioned response (IR), which is elicited by the tendency toward innate exploration.
