PSY320H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Robert Zajonc, Implicit Learning, Habituation
Document Summary
The original evidence: turkish words, chinese ideographs, and human faces. Robert zajonc (1968) suggested that mere exposure to a stimulus may be sufficient, even without direct interaction, to evoke a positive attitude. In theory, this mere exposure effect occurs when repeated, simple exposure to an object leads to more favorable findings toward it. In his experiments, participants were exposed to sets of novel foreign words, chinese ideographs, or human faces. Each stimulus was shown 0, 1, 2, 5, 10, or 25 times. Participants then evaluated each stimulus using a good-bad scale. Analyses of these ratings revealed that participants grew to like stimuli that they had seen more frequently. The effect of repeated exposure diminished somewhat at higher exposure levels (e. g. , 10 vs 25), but the overall effect was powerful. Mere exposure effect also has interesting implications for the processing of persuasive messages.
