Mere Exposure Effect: what is it and how is it expressed in psychology?

This studied effect explains that familiarity with something leads us to appreciate it favorably.

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 a certain person? This has an explanation according to social psychology; it is the so-called Mere Exposure Effect.

The Mere Exposure Effect was discovered by Robert Boleslaw Zajonc, an American social psychologist. This effect consists in the fact that 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 article we will learn about the origin of this effect, some of the conditions that influence its occurrence and possible causes of its appearance.

• Related article, "What is Social Psychology?"

The Mere Exposure Effect

The Mere Exposure Effect is a psychological phenomenon that consists in that, our liking for a certain stimulus or person, increases as we expose ourselves more to it, that is to say, the more we expose ourselves, the more we will like it. This effect is characteristic of social psychology, which sometimes sometimes also refers to it as the "familiarity principle"..

The mere exposure effect was first described by R.B. Zajonc (1968); Zajonc presented his finding, along with others, in a paper devoted to attitude change, 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 work of R.B. Zajonc

From his work on the Mere Exposure Effect, Zajonc hypothesizes that "the mere repeated exposure of a subject to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for an increase in positive attitude towards this stimulus". This effect appears even when the stimulus presentation conditions prevent its conscious identification"..

Zajonc's hypothesis was a challenge to the theoretical positions of the time (1960s), and asserted that attitudes could be formed simply on the basis of the frequency with which a stimulus is presented.

However, social psychology researchers, at that time, had already intuited that the more familiar we are with a stimulus, the more likely it is that our attitude toward it will be positive or favorable. or favorable.

Experimental procedure

To study the Mere Exposure Effect experimentally, subjects were exposed to affectively ours stimuli for very short periods of time; after this presentation, After this presentation, the subject was shown several new stimuliAfter this presentation, the subject was shown several new stimuli of similar characteristics, between which the stimuli exposed during the first phase were interspersed.

The Mere Exposure Effect was evident when the subject made significantly more positive evaluations of the objects initially exposed than of the set of stimuli presented for the first time in the final phase of evaluation.

Factors that determine it

There are several factors that determine the Mere Exposure Effect:

Type of stimulus 2.

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 in a subtle form..

2. Complexity of the stimuli

The effect is greater with complex than with simple stimuli; this phenomenon has been demonstrated in several studies has been demonstrated in several studies.

3. Number of exposures

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 smaller.

To illustrate this, Zajonc (1972) alluded to a logarithmic relationship that increases until a "ceiling effect" is reached. until it reaches a "ceiling effect".. Other researchers refer to a relationship that can be represented as an inverted U-shape.

4. Sequence of exposure

The Mere Exposure Effect will vary depending on whether the stimuli used are the same or vary; although few studies have been done 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 on the effect of in producing the Mere Exposure Effect. One author in particular, Hamid (1973), used an inverted U to explain the relationship between duration and effect obtained from his studies.

6. Stimulus recognition

The fact that the stimulus is familiar to the person (i.e., that the stimulus is "recognized") is not necessary for the Mere Exposure Effect to occur, and several studies have shown this. There are even studies that suggest that recognition or familiarity reduces the effect.

7. Interval between exposure and test

Here there is a disparity of opinions and resultsWhile there are some studies that find no change in relation to whether the interval between test and exposure is a few minutes or several weeks, other studies claim that there is an increase in the Mere Exposure Effect when the test phase is delayed after the initial exposure.

Causes of the effect

In more current studies, Zajonc (2000) is of the opinion that the Mere Exposure Effect is not mediated by subjective factors (e.g., stimulus familiarity, as discussed above), but in the "objective exposure history itself"; 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 (CE), while response preference would be the conditioned response (CR).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.