How to Hack The Brain Into Liking Someone or Something
The psychological phenomenon of familiarization
Have you ever listened to a song but not really liked it until you listened to it at least 10 times?
Well, that is a psychological phenomenon, the mere-exposure effect, and it happens constantly with all sorts of things.
Guideline
- How does it work
- Studies
- Mere-exposure effect in 2022
How does it work
Gustav Fechner, physicist, philosopher, and experimental psychologist, was the first one to conduct studies on the effect.
He stated that we react with fear to new and undiscovered things. However, this fear of the unknown vanishes when we become familiar with the unknown.
Mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his attitude toward it.
What is more, this effect has nothing to do with consciousness. It works the opposite way, when we are unaware of the familiarization, the mere-exposure effect is much stronger.
