Robert B. Zajonc

Feeling and Facial Efference: Implications of the Vascular Theory of Emotion

Is facial muscular movement capable of alterning emotional state? Facial feedback theories answer this question in the affirmative but do not specify the intervening process. Cognitive appraisal theories do not address this question at all. The vascular theory of emotional efference (VTEE) holds that facial muscular movement, by its action on the cavernous sinus, may restrict venous flow and thereby influence cooling of the arterial blood supply to the brain

Subliminal Mere Exposure: Specific, General, and Diffuse Effects

The present research examined the possibility that repeated exposure may simultaneously produce specific and diffuse effects. In Study 1, participants were presented with 5-ms exposures of 25 stimuli each shown once (single-exposure condition) or with five repetitions of 5 stimuli (repeated-exposure condition). Participants in the repeated-exposure condition subsequently rated their own mood more positively than those in the single-exposure condition. Study 2 examined whether affect generated by subliminal repeated exposures transfers to unrelated stimuli. After a subliminal exposure phase, affective reactions to previously exposed stimuli, to new but similar stimuli, and to stimuli from a different category were obtained. Previously exposed stimuli were rated most positively and novel different stimuli least positively. All stimuli were rated more positively in the repeated-exposure condition than in the single-exposure condition. These findings suggest that affect generated by subliminal repeated exposure is sufficiently diffuse to influence ratings of unrelated stimuli and mood.

Exposure effects in person perception: Familiarity, similarity, and attraction ☆

Two experiments explored the relationship between familiarity, similarity, and attraction. In the first experiment, subjects viewed photographs of faces at various exposure frequencies and then rated them for likeableness and similarity. Familiar people were regarded by the subjects as both more likeable and more similar to themselves. The effects of familiarity on perceived similarity were primarily mediated by changes in attraction, although some evidence of a direct link between familiarity and perceived similarity was also found. In the second experiment, subjects viewed the same stimuli at a single exposure frequency, and received bogus information regarding the similarity of the people shown therein. Subsequent ratings of likeableness and perceived familiarity revealed that people who seemed similar to the subjects were regarded as both more likeable and more familiar. The effects of similarity on perceived familiarity were almost entirely mediated by changes in attraction. Some of the theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

SOCIAL FACILITATION OF DOMINANT AND SUBORDINATE RESPONSES.

The hypothesis was examined that, because it. is drive-producing, the presence of an audience enhances the emission of dominant responses and inhibits the emission of subordinate responses. Thirty-nine subjects performed a pseudo-recognition task in which their guessing responses were based on dominant and subordinate habits, previously established by means of differential training. The probability of dominant responses was found to be higher for subjects working in the presence of an audience than for those working alone. The opposite result, however, was observed for subordinate responses. These findings are related to others in the area of social facilitation. Social facilitation studies show that the presence of other organisms, as coactors or as spectators, enhances performance on such tasks as multiplication (Allport, 1924; Dashiell, 1930)) chain association (Allport, 1924)) pursuit rotor (Travis, 1925)) signal detection (Bergum and Lehr, 1963), etc. The eating response, too, has been observed to increase in the presence of others (Harlow, 1932; James, 1953; Tolman and Wilson, 1965). Some studies, however, seem to show that the presence of other organisms has detrimental effects. The presence of spectators, for instance, was found to interfere with nonsense-syllable learning (Pessin, 1933) and with finger-maze learning (Husband, 1931). Animal subjects were also observed to suffer interference in maze learning when other members of the same species were present (Gates and Allee, 1933; Klopfer, 1958). These seemingly conflicting experimental results are reconciled by assuming that the presence of others has arousal consequences (Zajonc, 1965). If this assumption is valid, we would expect the presence of others to manifest the same pattern of effects as are obtained by increasing generalized drive (D) state, such as, for instance, the enhancement of dominant responses (Spence, 1956). If for a given experimental task dominant responses are largely correct ones-as they are in the performance of previously acquired skills-then the presence of others will

THE CONCEPTS OF BALANCE, CONGRUITY, AND DISSONANCE

The concept of consistency in man, a special case of a concept of universal consistency, has in recent years been productive of systematic theories and programs of research. Attitude change has been a focal area in this theoretical development. Consistency doctrines, however, lack specification of the conditions under which their predictions will hold. People like to make sense of their world, but they also seek out the magician to be entertained by incongruity. Historically the concept of consistency resembles the concept of vacuum in physics-a useful doctrine for organizing knowledge, although full of exceptions and contradictions. The author is an Assistant Program Director at the Research Center for Group Dynamics, an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, and a member of the Editorial Board of Contemporary Psychology and of Human Relations.

Is stimulus recognition a necessary condition for the occurrence of exposure effects

Many theories of exposure effects involve the operation of psychological processes that depend on some form of stimulus recognition. Two experiments investigated the role of stimulus recognition in the mere exposure phenomenon. Female subjects viewed novel stimuli at various exposure frequencies, then measures of stimulul recognition and effect were obtained. In each experiment, a significant and positive relationship was found between stimulus exposure and affect, even when the effects of stimulus recognition were held constant. Thus, stimulus recognition was not a necessary condition for the occurrence of the observed exposure effects. The results suggest that the relationship between stimulus exposure and affect does not depend on the operation of higher order cognitive processes, at least to the extent that such processes are themselves dependent upon stimulus recognition.

Validating the confluence model.

Several recent articles (Galbraith, 1982; Grotevant, Scarr, & Weinberg, 1977; Page & Grandon, 1979; Rodgers, 1981; Steelman & Mercy, 1980; Svanum & Bringle, 1980; Velandia, Grandon, & Page, 1978) claim to have tested the confluence model (Zajonc, Markus, & Markus, 1979), and many of them report having disconflrmed it. This contention is based on discrepancies between the data of these studies and what might be expected from the predictions of the confluence model. These discrepancies are invariably of two kinds. On the one hand are discrepancies between aggregate and individual data. Thus, when aggregate data are analyzed, the variables considered by the confluence model are found to explain a substantial amount of variation in intellectual performance. How

Exposure Effects and Associative Learning.

Abstract The contributions of initial stimulus affect and of associative learning to the effects of repeated stimulus exposures were examined in two experiments. Stimuli that were initially positive and stimuli that were initially negative were presented for different number of times, and subjects rated these stimuli afterward on a number of affective dimensions. In all cases, except when negative affect was associatively paired with every stimulus exposure, affective responses became increasingly more positive with increasing exposures. The results were taken to indicate that the exposure effect can overcome an initially negative stimulus affect when the conditions of the mere exposure hypothesis are satisfied. Initial stimulus affect and associative learning of affect were shown to be independent factors, the first influencing the intercept of the exposure function, the second its slope.

Individual and group risk-taking in a two-choice situation

Abstract Individual and group decision making under uncertainty was explored in an attempt to determine whether individual risk preferences change under group conditions. Subjects predicted which of two differentially probable stimulus events would occur, and were paid for correct anticipations in a series of 360 trials. The expected value of the choices was held constant by varying payoff inversely with the frequency of the two events. After 180 trials, individuals either continued alone or were formed into three-man groups. Groups showed consistent and significant shifts in the conservative direction, while individuals remaining alone did not shift. The data were examined in the light of various group-decision models and in the light of other explanations of the risky-shift phenomenon. Changes in individual risk preferences were interpreted as deriving from a change in subjective utilities of outcomes which occurs in the group situation.

Affiliation and social discrimination produced by brief exposure in day-old domestic chicks

Discrimination between individual strangers and companions was examined in day-old domestic chicks. In one experiment, pecking rates at companions and strangers were observed in pairwise bouts after 16 hr of cohabitation. The discriminability of strangers and companions was varied by means of pre-hatch colouring. Reliable discriminations between individual strangers and companions emerged as early as the first minute of the encounter. Discriminative cues provided by artificial colouring were found not to be necessary in establishing social discrimination. In a second experiment, undyed chicks were housed in pairs for 1, 4 or 16 hr. Half of the pairs lived in cages that separated companions by a wire screen, and half were housed in undivided cages. Observations of pecking in four-way bouts confirmed previous findings and demonstrated that the opportunity to peck during exposure may be a necessary condition in producing social discrimination. Antecedent conditions that lead to the development of affiliative bonds simultaneously appear to establish social discrimination.