Attitudinal effects of mere exposure.

Abstract

The hypothesis is offered that mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus object enhances his attitude toward it. By "mere " exposure is meant a condition making the stimulus accessible to the individual's perception. Support for the hypothesis consists of 4 types of evidence, presented and reviewed: (a) the correlation between affective connotation of words and word frequency; (b) the effect of experimentally manipulated frequency of exposure upon the affective connotation of nonsense words and symbols; (c) the correlation between word frequency and the attitude to their referents; (d) the effects of experimentally manipulated frequency of exposure on atti-tude. The relevance for the exposure-attitude hypothesis of the exploration theory and of the semantic satiation findings were examined. On February 27, 1967, the Associated Press carried the following story from Corvallis, Oregon: A mysterious student has been attending a class at Oregon State University for the past two months enveloped in a big black bag. Only his bare feet show. Each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 11:00 A.M. the Black Bag sits on a small table near the back of the classroom. The class is Speech 113— basic persuasion.... Charles Goetzinger, professor of the class, knows the identity of the person inside. None of the 20 students in the class do. Goetzinger said the students ' attitude changed from hostility toward the Black Bag to curiosity and finally to friendship [italics added]. This monograph examines the general hy-pothesis implied by the above phenomenon: mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the en-hancement of his attitude toward it. By "mere

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