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
Famous quotes containing the words mere and/or effect:
“He wasn’t off a mere degree;
His reckoning was off a sea.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Living more lives than one, knowing people of all classes, all shades of opinion, monarchists, republicans, socialists, anarchists, has had a salutary effect on my mind. If every year of my life, every month of the year, I had lived with reformers and crusaders I should be, by this time, a fanatic. As it is I have had such varied things to do, I have had so many different contacts that I am not even very much of a crank.”
—Rheta Childe Dorr (1866–1948)