Abstract
The mere-exposure literature has shown that familiar objects are preferred to novel objects. However, no work has definitively shown that mere exposure can direct and facilitate approach movements. In Experiment 1, participants were shown stimuli and were later re-exposed to them along with novel stimuli. Participants were directed to make an approach or avoidant motion to each and response times were recorded. As predicted, participants were quicker to approach and slower to avoid familiar relative to novel stimuli. In Experiment 2, participants were shown mere-exposed and novel symbols and were asked to “push” or “pull” a joystick in response to each, based on their intuition. Extending Experiment 1’s findings, participants freely selected an approach response more frequently for familiar compared to novel stimuli. Moreover, in this same experiment, familiar stimuli were judged as more likeable than were novel stimuli, and participants’ liking for familiar stimuli correlated with the frequency with which they were approached. Implications of these findings are discussed.
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Notes
There was neither a main effect of, nor interaction involving, participant gender.
We ran a 2 (motion: push, pull) × 2 (status: familiar, novel) × 2 (stimulus set approached: set A, set B) × 2 (stimulus set familiar: set A, set B) mixed-model ANOVA. Unexpectedly, there was one significant effect that involved a counterbalancing factor: the stimulus set familiar × motion × status interaction. The pattern of this interaction showed that the predicted motion × status interaction was significant only when stimulus set A was the familiar set (and thus set B was the novel set). The results reported in the main text collapse over this factor, so some caution should be used when generalizing those findings.
There was neither a main effect of, nor interaction involving, participant gender.
In the assessment of demographic information, we asked participants in this experiment if they could read or speak Chinese. Nine participants indicated that they could. The findings reported in the main text include these participants because analyses that excluded them yielded the same results.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation [BCS-0719694] awarded to Heather Claypool.
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Jones, I.F., Young, S.G. & Claypool, H.M. Approaching the familiar: On the ability of mere exposure to direct approach and avoidance behavior. Motiv Emot 35, 383–392 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-011-9228-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-011-9228-7