Mere Exposure As A Source Of Positive Affect

This study is to investigate the affective quality of the neutral Chinese words that have been exposed repeatedly and to find the relationship between mere exposure effect and the generation of positive affect. In the study, through combine the mere exposure effect paradigm with affective priming paradigm, two event-related potentials (ERPs) experiments were operated. A total of 34 undergraduate students participated. The materials were sixty positive, sixty negative and sixty neutral Chinese words which had been estimated on valence, frequency, and complexity. ERPs were recorded from 64 sites during the affective priming paradigm. In experiment 1, subjects were asked to finish a affective priming task which the valence of priming words are unpleasant, neutral and pleasant. subjects responded to target words which follows prime words and mask stimulus and decided whether the target words is a positive word or a negative one. In experiment 2, the task was same to experiment1, but the neutral words have been mere exposed to subjects before affective priming task. The N200, N400 and P520 components elicited by target words of affective priming task were examined both in experiment 1 and 2. These results demonstrated that the N200,N400 and P520 components were modulated by mere exposure effect. And this effect could produce positive affective state and enhance the different between both neutral words and unpleasant words with the pleasant words. So, this research suggested that the mere exposure of stimuli may be a source of the formation of positive affection.