{"id":5004,"date":"2019-11-26T19:52:53","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T00:52:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=5004"},"modified":"2020-02-07T11:21:32","modified_gmt":"2020-02-07T16:21:32","slug":"read-this-a-few-times-i-promise-youll-like-it-the-mere-exposure-effect-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2019\/11\/26\/read-this-a-few-times-i-promise-youll-like-it-the-mere-exposure-effect-at-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Read this a FEW times… I Promise You’ll like it: The Mere Exposure Effect At Work"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sometimes when you hear a song for the first time you do not like it. The mere exposure effect may cause you to like it after hearing it so many times!<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0When Party in the USA comes at a party, there is nothing stopping me. I know every word, every beat, and every guitar strum of that song. The energy in the room is wild, and I can confidently say that everyone is enjoying themselves, maybe not as much as I am, but nonetheless, enjoying\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

themselves. I mean, what else can you expect from a 2009 banger that has been played on repeat since its debut on Disney Channel? But what happens when the kid on AUX switches to one of his soundcloud mystery raps that no one knows? I find myself enjoying the time much less, and everyone seemingly starts to mingle instead of dance. Why would Party in the USA have better success at a party over a new soundcloud rap? Cognitive psychology and the mere exposure effect can explain this.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The mere\u00a0<\/span>exposure effect<\/span><\/a>\u00a0is a psychological phenomenon where people tend to prefer things that they are exposed to more often, compared to things that they have normal exposure to (Van Dessel, Mertens, Smith, & Houwer, 2019). People are more likely to be in favor of certain things that they have repeated exposure to and are more familiar with, even if they are unaware of it. This can explain why Party in the USA is such a hit at parties compared to the soundcloud rap.The mere exposure effect is used by artists, having their songs played on the radio repeatedly for people to develop positive feelings towards it, by brands in their constant advertising to make you want to buy a product more, and can even explain why you like the person that sits next to you in two classes every day over somebody else. Reflecting on this phenomenon, it is easy to see why this can be true. In general, we do not like to go to unfamiliar places, spend time with unfamiliar people, or put ourselves in unfamiliar situations. The comfort of familiarity drives us to do the same things over and over again, which eventually increases our liking if it. Investigating the mere exposure effect can tell us why familiarity is so important to how we judge something and make us realize how influential it can really be in our lives. So how does it really work?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Attention and the mere exposure effect are closely tied. Attention describes the way we focus on our environment to collect information about what is going on around us. Attending or not attending to something is one of our first interactions with a stimulus and will determine the way that we process it. One model of attention defines it as having a limited capacity, which means that we can only pay attention to a few things at a time. If you think about it, it would be so hard to pay attention to everything going on in a room around you and process it all at once. The things that we actually attend to, tend to be processed at a higher level because we are allocating more of our processing skills to one thing rather than multiple. This means that the more we pay attention to something, the more of our attentional resources we can dedicate to understanding and processing the information for meaning. When we process things for meaning, we have to go beyond the surface features of the stimuli and this process often takes time. However, after we have processed something once, the easier it becomes to process in the future because the steps of processing it become more automatic in our brains, taking up a whole lot less our limited attention.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Attention can relate to the mere exposure effect through the processing fluency effect<\/a>. The processing fluency effect is the preference for things that are easy to process. In other words, we like things that are easy to process and that don\u2019t take up our attentional capacity (Duke, Fiacconi, & K\u00f6hler 2014). Because of our limited capacity, our brains like when we are not taking up so much of it. Like I mentioned before, the more exposure we have to do something, the more we have paid attention to it, and the easier it becomes to process. This makes us like something more because we can process it quickly and effortlessly (Yagi, Ikoma, Kikuchi).The mere exposure effect occurs when repeated exposures to something creates a preference towards it, but the intermediate step in that is how it is processed by our attention. After repeated exposures and time to process the information about something, we are more inclined to feel as though it is familiar. These feelings of familiarity lead us to preference.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0To summarize, the mere exposure effect depends a lot on our attention and processing, If we pay attention to something for the first time, it takes up alot of our attentional space, but the more exposure we have to it the easier it becomes to process. The processing fluency effect is when we feel like we can process something easily, we like it better and it is the mediator between attention and preference in the mere exposure effect. It ties together the development of automaticity and ease of processing from our attentional processing, and preference.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Cognitive biases like the mere exposure effect can influence our decisions and behaviors and sometimes we are unaware of it!<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Now you have learned about how the mere exposure effect works in our brain, and maybe you can even think of your preferences that are a result of it. Why does it matter? The mere exposure effect can explain different preferences that we have and make us question why we prefer certain things. Is it because we actually like them, or because we have been exposed to them so much? Afterall, is Party in The USA really a piece of musical genius and artistry, or have we just listened to it too many times? Song preference is only a minor implication that the mere exposure effect has had on my life. After learning about the mere exposure effect and how the processing fluency effect relates to it, it has made me realize how these psychological phenomena can have larger impacts and have real external consequences in our lives. Not all of our preferences stem from the mere exposure effect, but if you think about the effect that our preferences have on our lives, you can see that our preferences guide the decisions we make and can even change our behavior. A psychological phenomenon that most people don’t even know about can be the root reason why a person travels across the country to see a concert of their favorite band, or why someone eats the same fattening sandwich every day even if it is not that good. What effects has it had on your life?<\/span><\/p>\n

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References:<\/p>\n

Duke, D., Fiacconi, C. M., & K\u00f6hler, S. (2014). Parallel effects of processing fluency and positive affect on\u00a0<\/span>familiarity-based recognition decisions for faces. <\/span>Frontiers in psychology<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>5<\/span><\/i>, 328. doi:10.3389\/fpsyg.2014.00328<\/span><\/p>\n

Hyde, T. S., & Jenkins, J. J. (1969). Differential effects of incidental tasks on the organization of <\/span>recall of a list of highly associated words.\u00a0<\/span>Journal of Experimental Psychology<\/span><\/i>,\u00a0<\/span>82<\/span><\/i>(3),\u00a0<\/span>472 481.https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1037\/h0028372<\/span><\/p>\n

Van Dessel, P., Mertens, G., Smith, C. T., & De Houwer, J. (2019). Mere exposure effects on implicit\u00a0<\/span>stimulus evaluation: The moderating role of evaluation task, number of\u00a0stimulus presentations, and memory for presentation\u00a0<\/span>frequency.\u00a0<\/span>Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin<\/span><\/i>,\u00a0<\/span>45<\/span><\/i>(3), 447\u2013460.https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/01461672187890<\/span>65<\/span><\/p>\n

Wang, M.-Y., & Lee, K.-W. (2012). Encoding fluency and the mere exposure effect.\u00a0<\/span>Chinese\u00a0Journal of\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u00a0Psychology<\/span><\/i>,\u00a0<\/span>54<\/span><\/i>(4), 561\u2013 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 577.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wilson, W. R. (1979). Feeling more than we can know: Exposure effects without learning.\u00a0<\/span>Journal of Personality and Social<\/span><\/i>\u00a0Psychology<\/span><\/i>,\u00a0<\/span>37<\/span><\/i>(6), 811\u2013821. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1037\/0022-3514.37.6.811<\/span><\/p>\n

Zajonc, R. B. (2008). Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. In R. H. Fazio & R.\u00a0<\/span>Petty (Eds.),\u00a0<\/span>Attitudes: Their \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/i>structure, function, and consequences.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(pp. 143\u2013168).New York, NY: Psychology Press.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Image References:<\/p>\n

Meme of Rebecca Black<\/i>. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/consumerologyblog.wordpress.com\/2016\/11\/11\/so-you-love-your-boyfriend-after-week-1-falsemere-exposure-effect\/#jp-carousel-327<\/p>\n

Cognitive Biases in Business<\/i>. (n.d.). Retrieved from https:\/\/images.app.goo.gl\/AU4aoq2mWZuuepap6<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0When Party in the USA comes at a party, there is nothing stopping me. I know every word, every beat, and every guitar strum of that song. The energy in the room is wild, and I can confidently say that everyone is enjoying themselves, maybe not as much as I am, but nonetheless, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9696,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80216,266316,80218],"tags":[408669,408692,370853],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9696"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5004"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5366,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5004\/revisions\/5366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}