Salience theory of mere exposure: Relative exposure increases liking, extremity, and emotional intensity.

Abstract

We propose and support a salience explanation of exposure effects. We suggest that repeated exposure to stimuli influences evaluations by increasing salience, the relative quality of standing out from other competing stimuli. In Experiments 1 and 2, we manipulated exposure, presenting some stimuli 9 times and other stimuli 3 times, 1 time, or 0 times, as in previous mere exposure research. Exposure increased liking, replicating previous research (Zajonc, 1968), and increased salience, made evaluations more extreme, and made stimuli more emotionally intense. Across experiments, results of multiple mediation models and a causal chain of experiments supported the idea that salience explains these exposure effects. Fluency and apprehension, 2 constructs that have been invoked to explain mere exposure, accounted for less of these effects according to the mediation models and the chain of experiments. We next manipulated relative exposure and absolute exposure orthogonally, finding that relative exposure increases liking more than absolute exposure. Stimuli presented 9 times were liked more when other stimuli in the context were presented less than 9 times than when the other stimuli were presented more than 9 times (Experiment 4). Whereas absolute exposure had no significant effect in Experiment 4, relative exposure increased liking, extremity, and emotional intensity. In Experiment 5, a direct manipulation of salience increased liking, evaluative extremity, and emotional intensity. These results suggest that salience partially explains effects previously attributed to absolute “mere” exposure.

Attitudes from mere co-occurrences are guided by differentiation.

“…A possible explanation for this finding is that participants habituate to the redundantly paired US pictures, which then perpetually lose their affective potential. Though we cannot rule out affective fading as contributing factor entirely, Experiments 3 and 4 found that participants evaluated the redundantly paired pictures as more and not less evaluatively extreme than the distinctly paired pictures, which is in line with recent research showing that repetition increases subjective affective extremity of stimuli (Mrkva & van Boven, 2020). The distinctly paired US pictures thus had a stronger influence on the brand evaluations than the redundantly paired pictures although they were perceived as less evaluatively extreme.…”

“…For example, when a participant is exposed to a negative picture for the first time, the picture may elicit strong negative affect which is then transferred to the CS brand, whereas this affective potential may decrease when the same US picture is encountered repeatedly. Although recent research has found that repeated exposure to stimuli increases and not decreases subjective affective intensity of stimuli (Mrkva & Van Boven, 2020), it is nevertheless important to test a possible habituation explanation. Experiment 3 therefore aimed to replicate Experiment 2 and also asked participants to evaluate the US pictures at the end of the experiment.…”

Preferences need inferences: Learning, valuation, and curiosity in aesthetic experience

“…Also emphasizing individual learning, Forster, Gerger, & Leder (2015) showed that an effect of ease of processing could only be found in within-participant (not between-subject) comparisons. Similarly, relative exposure, i.e., being presented more often than other stimuli in the set, increases liking more than absolute exposure (Mrkva & Van Boven, 2020). Together, such findings suggest that participants implicitly track the expected fluency across the recent history of experiences and attribute value to deviations from this expectation, a notion that will become important later on.…”

Facilitating animacy perception by manipulating stimuli exposure time

“…It is crucial to inspect the underlying mechanisms biased by gaze manipulation that directly influence animacy perception. Attentional bias results in changes in the target's characteristics such as saliency, liking [61], and familiarity [54].…”