Mere Exposure a Review of Theory & Research

Abstract

This article is aiming to present overall results of three decades of study on the mere exposure phenomenon with differing and sometimes competing explanations about the sources of effects. Although mere exposure research originated from social psychology, it has several implications in communication. Another goal is to provide some implications in the persuasive communication. The literature review part of the article indicates several important experiments in great detail. This part summarizes the results of the selected studies including procedures and measures taken. The next two parts of the article demonstrate the different effects of repeated exposure to a stimulus and different theoretical explanations of the mere exposure. Besides, the sources of mere exposure effect caused several debates among researchers. At least two school of thoughts (affectivist vs. cognitivist) are still debating over the issue. Fifth part of the article mentions this debate and presents the counteviews. There is also practical implementations of the mere exposure is explained in the article.