How affected are you by novel things?

People’s attitudes vary across factors such as time, mood, situations and environmental settings. A simple question such as ‘What is your attitude towards lizards?’ or ‘What is your attitude towards teenage abortion?’ can generate many different types of responses by various people. So what exactly is attitude? Attitude is defined as ‘an individual’s evaluation of a target along a good-bad dimension’ which involves a person’s general judgment about whether a target (e.g. object, person) is positive or negative (Breckler, Olson & Wiggins, 2006).

According to Breckler, Olson, and Wiggins (2006) in the Social psychology alive textbook, attitude has affective (feelings and emotions), behavioral (actions), and cognitive (beliefs) components. The mere exposure effect labeled by Robert Zajonc (1968) in his study refers to the inclination to have a positive liking for a novel object or person target due to repeated exposure. The concept of mere exposure challenges the classic saying of ‘familiarity breeds contempt’. He argued on the basis of his study that this saying should be altered to ‘familiarity breeds content’, which befits the findings of his study. He suggested a few possible reasons for this phenomenon. One reason that the mere exposure effect happens is because we are unsure how we should react to novel objects or situations, which causes us feelings of unpleasantness. However, as we become more knowledgeable/ familiar with the object or situation in question, we become more certain regarding how we should react to it, which reduces our feelings of unpleasantness and increases feelings of pleasantness. Another reason he suggested was our processing speed for perceiving and categorizing familiar objects, situations or people is faster and easier than if the objects, situations or people are not familiar to us. Therefore, through mere exposure, feelings of pleasantness can be linked to an object, situation or person by increasing the person’s positive attitude toward the object, situation or person.

Some examples of the mere exposure effect are:

• You dislike your new hairstyle after a haircut. However, you begin to like it after a few weeks when you’ve gotten used to it.
• Familiar fashion brand names like GUESS?, Chanel, and Espirit are usually seen as trustworthy and deliver high quality products.
• Your new colleague looks quite weird to you the first time you see him/her. However, after working with him/her for a few weeks, he/she looks more normal to you.

Back in my previous job as a childcare teacher, the children developed a fever over the Chinese song (lao shu ai da mi, 老鼠爱大米) sung by the singer Jocie Guo Mei Mei when it was released. Those of you who watch our local Chinese tv channels would recall the music video and song being played over and over. At first, the children did not seem to display any liking for the song which was played on the school bus. However, after being exposed to the song repeatedly on top of seeing the music video and advertisements on tv, they grew to like the song very much. They would tell the bus uncle to play that particular song repeatedly everyday, failing which they would pester the bus uncle until he gave in. They would all sing the song over and over again on the bus and even sing it to the teachers in school. It almost drove me crazy to hear the song everyday.

Another song that probably caught on by the mere exposure effect was the theme song for the cartoon movie, Madagascar. The children were singing the song so much that even their teacher (who was my classmate then) was influenced by them and started singing the song to our group of friends in school.