Mere Exposure Effect
One important contribution was the demonstration of the mere exposure effect, the phenomenon that repeated exposure to a stimulus brings about an attitude change in relation to the stimulus. He focused on processes involved in social behavior, with an emphasis on the relationship between affect, or emotion, and cognition. For example, he found that participants reacted more favorably toward the nonsense words zebulons and worbus through repeated exposure. Zajonc was also well known for demonstrating how social facilitation (how the presence of others increases or decreases performance) works in humans and other animals, notably in cockroaches, which indicated that social facilitation is not entirely the result of higher cognitive processes.
Read more about this topic: Robert Zajonc
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