Mere-Exposure Effect

How the mere exposure effect influences your life.

The mere-exposure effect is a tendency to prefer the more familiar to you over something new and unknown.

The more often you see something, the more positively you perceive it. At the same time, the first contact with something new must make either a neutral or a positive impression on you. These can be the people you meet every day, the music you listen to, or well-known brands whose numerous advertisements are profoundly imprinted in your subconscious.

If you were repelled by something already at the first sight, you hardly want to contemplate it again and again with the unceasing enthusiasm of the discoverer.

Only because you often interact with something familiar that doesn’t evoke negative emotions in you, you automatically perceive it with trust and sympathy. Why is this happening?

• because of the perception’s ease. The brain processes sensory impressions it already knows very quickly. Something new, on the contrary, requires more cognitive effort. It means more intense work of a gray matter. The brain does this without much enthusiasm.
• because of the avoidance of ambiguity and uncertainty. From an evolutionary point of view, uncertainty is always associated with danger. If you see something or someone over and over again, and nothing terrible happens to you, your brain stops associating it with danger.
• because of frequent contact with a specific person, you know how to interpret their behavior. This helps to predict how they will behave in further situations. Therefore, it’s easier for you to evaluate their subsequent actions and to be imbued with trust in them.

Also, the mere-exposure effect influences your choice of friends and close acquaintances.

Since you know yourself better than others, you have formed a special attitude towards yourself. Therefore, you tend to surround yourself with people who are somewhat like you. This gives you a sense of kinship, subconsciously reducing the unpredictability of your acquaintances’ behavior. What is already familiar is perceived by you faster and with greater confidence.

You can use the mere-exposure effect advantageously in everyday life.

For example, trying to convince a particular person of something, it’s enough, again and again, to repeat your words with constant enthusiasm and a subtle shade of persistence. In this case, you should make sure that the other person does not take your comments negatively. After a certain number of unobtrusive repetitions, your counterpart will fall under the influence of the mere-exposure effect and internalize your words.

Using the mere exposure effect, you can increase the liking of yourself by other people. To do this, you need to frequently be in the company with the same people to be seen or to interact with them who treat you neutrally or positively. The constant presence of a person “lulls” the brain’s vigilance and is perceived as something already familiar and trusting.

The mere exposure effect occurs when you prefer the familiar to the unknown. As soon as your brain recognizes the structures it already knows, it immediately “disarms” itself.

Marketers and PR specialists use this effect to increase consumer acceptance by skillfully manipulating customers. Knowing how this effect works, you can easily apply it in your life.