Stimulus Recognition and the Mere Exposure Effect

A meta-analysis of research on Zajonc's (1968) mere exposure effect indicated that stimuli perceived without awareness produce substantially larger exposure effects than do stimuli that are consciously perceived ( Bornstein, 1989a ). However, this finding has not been tested directly in the laboratory. Two experiments were conducted comparing the magnitude of the exposure effect produced by 5-ms (i.e., subliminal) stimuli and stimuli presented for longer durations (i.e., 500 ms). In both experiments, 5-ms stimuli produced significantly larger mere exposure effects than did 500-ms stimuli. These results were obtained for polygon (Experiment 1), Welsh figure (Experiment 2), and photograph stimuli (Experiments 1 and 2). Implications of these findings for theoretical models of the mere exposure effect are discussed.