CogBlog – A Cognitive Psychology Blog

If you’ve ever worked a retail job or simply listened to the radio, you’ve probably had the experience of listening to whatever pop song is most popular at the time about a hundred times a day. You might hate the song with a passion at first, but over time you may admit to finding it catchy and even enjoying it. On TV or the radio, the same advertisements are often broadcast over and over again, until you could recite them from memory. Maybe you find the ad annoying at first, but after a while you may find yourself humming along to the jingle. Have you ever noticed that someone has a similar commute to work or school as you, so you see them every day on public transportation? You may consequently find yourself happy to see them or worrying when they’re not there, although you’ve never spoken to them.

This phenomenon of liking for a stimulus—like a song, advertisement, or even a person—increasing when we are exposed to that stimulus multiple times is called the mere-exposure effect (Montoya et al., 2017). Essentially, simply becoming familiar with a stimulus leads to liking (Bornstein, 1989). This effect happens with a wide range of different stimuli, including music, nonsense words, faces, advertisements, food, and even Chinese ideographs (Bornstein, 1989, Pugnaghi et al., 2019). The mere-exposure effect can cause liking to increase not just for a specific stimulus, but also for related stimuli that we haven’t previously been exposed to (Zajonc, 2001). For example, in one study, people were repeatedly shown certain Chinese ideographs. Later, people liked new, yet similar, Chinese ideographs more than new stimuli that were completely different, even if they only saw them once (Monahan et al., 2000). So, if you hear one song by a certain artist over and over again until you find yourself enjoying it, it may only take you one listen to start liking their newest song. A few different things can affect how powerful the mere-exposure effect is, or how much our liking for something increases after being exposed to it. These include the type of stimulus and how complex it is, how long you’re exposed to a stimulus for, and the amount of time between being exposed to a stimulus and giving a rating of it (Bornstein, 1989, Pugnaghi et al., 2019).

One of the most interesting parts of the mere-exposure effect is that we don’t actually need to be aware of a stimulus for our liking of it to increase. The mere-exposure effect happens even when we are subliminally exposed to stimuli (Bornstein, 1989, Pugnaghi et al., 2019, Zajonc 2001). Subliminal exposure happens when we’re presented with a stimulus without consciously perceiving it, like when we see something for only a fraction of a second and can’t say what it is, but it still has an impact. People even report more liking for a stimulus that is presented without their awareness than for one they’re consciously aware of (Zajonc, 2001). In fact, repeated subliminal exposure to a stimulus can boost a positive mood overall, in addition to increasing liking for that stimulus (Monahan et al., 2000). If you’ve ever noticed a random boost in your mood, but you can’t attribute a reason to it, maybe it’s because you’ve heard the same song playing in the background a few times over the course of your day.

So, why does the mere-exposure effect occur? One model, called the Representation-Matching Model, takes into account ways that we process information and memory (Montoya et al., 2017). We store mental representations, which are mental structures or codes that represent our ideas and knowledge, in our memory. When we encounter new stimuli that match up with mental representations that we already have in memory, they are thought to be “correct,” so they are liked more (Montoya et al., 2017). For example, you might hear a new pop song that sounds like what you imagine when you think of a pop song, so you would think of this new song as being “correct.” Basically, the more often we are exposed to a certain stimulus, the more we see that stimulus as being “correct,” and the more we like that stimulus (Montoya et al., 2017). Our representation of that stimulus becomes more stable as we are repeatedly exposed to it until it becomes familiar and is stored in memory (Montoya et al., 2017). This increases retrieval fluency, which means that the more often we retrieve a specific memory, the easier it is to later retrieve that memory again (Montoya et al., 2017). The more times we are exposed to a stimulus, the more retrieval cues are created for it, like how you might remember a song if you’re in a store where you’ve heard it, or if you smell a candle that was burning while you were listening to it. This allows us to later remember the stimulus more easily, making it seem more familiar to us and increasing our liking for it. This is similar to flashbulb memories: the more we are exposed to a stimulus, the more easily we will remember it, like how we can easily retrieve memories of emotionally-charged events because we are repeatedly exposed to them.

The mere-exposure effect has interesting, and potentially concerning, implications in our lives. The mere-exposure effect has been studied with rather harmless stimuli, like nonwords and music. But with more violent stimuli, like weapons, it could be dangerous to start liking things that we see more often, especially with the amount of weapons seen in movies, TV, and video games. Sometimes we don’t even pick up on the stimulus we’re being exposed to, but our liking for it still increases. This means that we can be influenced into liking things without even realizing it’s happening. Think of how movies, TV shows, and music videos sometimes subtly (or not-so-subtly) have actors using certain products, or have certain products appear in the background. Most of the time, we don’t consciously pick up on this product placement, but after being exposed to Tony Stark grabbing a meal from Burger King, you might be more inclined to get lunch there or say you like that fast food chain more than McDonald’s or Wendy’s. With the mere-exposure effect at play, it’s important to think critically about why you like something, especially since we can be influenced so strongly and easily by subliminal exposure.

References

Bornstein, R. F. (1989). Exposure and affect: Overview and meta-analysis of research, 1968–1987. Psychological Bulletin, 106(2), 265–289. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.106.2.2

Cherkasov, A. (2020). Burger King in Iron Man. Marketing Psycho. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.marketing-psycho.com/iron-man-product-placement/.

Chetwynd, C. (2016, December 1). Mere Exposure Effect. Cartoon. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.instagram.com/p/BNd08g0ADnM/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link.

Listening to the same 5 songs every day [Digital image]. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.lovethispic.com/image/357491/me-listening-to-the-same-5-songs-every-single-day

Monahan, J. L., Murphy, S. T., & Zajonc, R. B. (2000). Subliminal mere exposure: Specific, general, and diffuse effects. Psychological Science, 11(6), 462–466. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00289

Montoya, R. M., Horton, R. S., Vevea, J. L., Citkowicz, M., & Lauber, E. A. (2017). A re-examination of the mere exposure effect: The influence of repeated exposure on recognition, familiarity, and liking. Psychological Bulletin, 143(5), 459–498. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000085.supp

Pugnaghi, G., Memmert, D., & Kreitz, C. (2019). Examining effects of preconscious mere exposure: An inattentional blindness approach. Consciousness and Cognition: An International Journal, 75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2019.102825

Zajonc, R. B. (2001). Mere exposure: A gateway to the subliminal. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(6), 224–228. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00154