Mere Exposure

Repeated exposure to a stimulus increases liking for it, with no argument, no reward and no recall required.

Robert Zajonc, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1968)

What it does

Supplies the mechanism under continuous low-attention advertising. Preference can be built by frequency alone, without anyone processing a claim, which is why media weight buys something even when nothing about the ad is remembered afterwards. It is one of the most replicated findings in psychology and it sits underneath a large share of what this index calls brand building.

When it breaks

The curve turns over. A meta-analysis of 268 curve estimates from 81 articles finds the effect is inverted-U shaped — liking rises with exposure and then falls — so the schedule that built preference destroys it if it keeps running unchanged. The effect is also strongest where the exposure is not consciously recognised, which means the attention an ad wins can cost it the mechanism it was relying on.

Case

Bornstein and D'Agostino tested the awareness condition directly, comparing exposure effects from 5-millisecond and 500-millisecond presentations of the same stimuli. In both experiments the 5-millisecond stimuli produced significantly larger exposure effects: the less the stimulus was recognised, the more the exposure moved liking.

Bornstein & D'Agostino — Stimulus Recognition and the Mere Exposure Effect, JPSP (1992) ↗

Diagram not yet drawn

Liking against number of exposures as an inverted U, the peak marked, and the descending arm labelled with the media schedule that is still running past it.

In the wild

Unchecked · not part of the tier

What people have written about this tool in the last twelve months. A machine found these and nobody has read them. Everything above this line was checked by hand.

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