Exposure Effect
Familiarity Principle · Mere-Exposure Effect
A psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them.
Origin
Polish-American psychologist Robert Zajonc demonstrated the effect in his landmark 1968 paper "Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure" in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Zajonc showed that simply exposing people to unfamiliar stimuli — Chinese characters, nonsense words, faces — made them rate those stimuli more positively. The finding, initially met with skepticism, became one of the most replicated results in social psychology.
Everyday Use
The song you hated the first time becomes a guilty pleasure after hearing it five times. The coworker you barely noticed becomes someone you genuinely like after months of shared lunches. We confuse familiarity with quality — and advertisers, politicians, and playlist algorithms know it.