Conscious and unconscious processes in the mere exposure effect

The effect of exposure on liking was studied. Seven experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, subjects were shown irregular octagons for brief durations so that subjects could not recognize them. An unpredicted effect was obtained. Exposure increased liking for attractive octagons, but exposure decreased liking for unattractive octagons. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated this attractiveness moderated exposure effect. Experiment 5 replicated this attractiveness moderated effect with a different population of stimuli and a different exposure procedure. It is proposed that exposure effects for unrecognized objects are caused by two mental processes. The first process is an implicit memory process: Objects that are previously encountered but are not consciously remembered activate a memory trace that causes the object to seem familiar. The second process is an attribution process: When a person encounters an unrecognized but familiar object, the person draws inferences about why the object seems familiar. It is proposed that objects are attributed to positive sources show increased liking and objects attributed to negative sources show decreased liking. It was hypothesized that attractive familiar objects are typically attributed to positive sources and unattractive familiar objects are attributed to negative sources. Experiments 4, 6, and 7 tested this model. Subjects performed three tasks. Subjects first engaged in the exposure task by reading a list of nonfamous names. Next, subjects performed a long distractor task to decrease explicit recollection of the exposed names. Finally, subjects judged whether names in a list belonged to someone famous or not. Exposure affected the source familiar to which objects were attributed differently for attractive and unattractive names in all three experiments. In Experiment 4, subjects judged whether or not names belonged to someone famous. In Experiment 6, subjects judged whether or not names belonged to a Senator. In both experiments, exposure increased the rate of attributions of fame or Senator for attractive but not unattractive names. In Experiment 7, subjects judged whether or not names belonged to a famous criminal. In this experiment, exposure increased the rate of attributions for unattractive but not attractive names. These results support the proposed implicit memory/attribution model of exposure effects.