R. B. Zajonc

Affective and Cognitive Factors in Preferences

Affective factors play an important role in the development and maintenance of preferences. The representation of affect can take a variety of forms, including motor responses and somatic reactions. This explains why cognitive methods of preference change that are directed at only one form of representation have seldom been effective.

Mere Exposure: A Gateway to the Subliminal

In the mere-repeated-exposure paradigm, an individual is repeatedly exposed to a particular stimulus object, and the researcher records the individuals emerging preference for that object. Vast literature on the mere-repeated-exposure effect shows it to be a robust phenomenon that cannot be explained by an appeal to recognition memory or perceptual fluency. The effect has been demonstrated across cultures, species, and diverse stimulus domains. It has been obtained even when the stimuli exposed are not accessible to the participants’ awareness, and even prenatally. The repeated-exposure paradigm can be regarded as a form of classical conditioning if we assume that the absence of aversive events constitutes the unconditioned stimulus. Empirical research shows that a benign experience of repetition can in and of itself enhance positive affect, and that such affect can become attached not only to stimuli that have been exposed but also to similar stimuli that have not been previously exposed, and to totally distinct stimuli as well. Implications for affect as a fundamental and independent process are discussed in the light of neuroanatomical evidence.

Additivity of Nonconscious Affect: Combined Effects of Priming and Exposure

Affect deriving from 2 independent sources--repeated exposure and affective priming--was induced, and the combined effects were examined. In each of 4 studies, participants were first shown 72 Chinese ideographs in which the frequency of exposure was varied (0, 1, or 3). In the second phase participants rated ideographs that were primed either positively, negatively, or not at all. The 4 studies were identical except that the exposure duration--suboptimal (4 ms) or optimal (1 s)--of both the initial exposure phase and the subsequent priming phase was orthogonally varied. Additivity of affect was obtained only when affective priming was suboptimal, suggesting that nonconscious affect is diffuse. Affect whose source was apparent was more constrained. Interestingly, increases in liking generated through repeated exposures did not differ as a function of exposure duration.

Exposure and affect: A field experiment

A field experiment was carried out to test the hypothesis that the mere repeated exposure of a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of the S’s attitude toward it. The utilization of a series of display advertisements in the newspapers of two universities made it possible to specify that a set of five Turkish words was exposed at various frequencies to large numbers of people. Questionnaires containing the test words and a good-bad rating scale for each were subsequently distributed among the school populations. The hypothesis gained support: respondents assigned the highest affective ratings to the most frequently exposed words, the lowest ratings to the least frequently exposed words, and moderate ratings to the words appearing at intermediate frequencies.

Effect of Extreme Exposure Frequencies on Different Affective Ratings of Stimuli

Two experiments examined the effects of extreme number of exposures on reactions to stimuli rated on several dimensions. The first experiment gave a positive monotone relationship between affective ratings on the GOOD-BAD scale and the frequency of stimulus exposure, with frequencies as high as 243. The second experiment obtained ratings for the same exposure frequencies on four scales, some of which measured affinitive approach while others measured exploratory approach reactions. The former tended to show an increase with frequency of exposure and the latter a decrease. Theoretical analysis attempted to reconcile experimental evidence which indicates increasing affect with increasing exposure and evidence for an inverted-U relationship.