Distinguishing The Impacts Of Representational And Recognitional Fluency On Liking

As one of the most famous phenomena in social psychology, the mere-exposure effect is about the finding that "mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his attitude toward it". A considerable volume of additional evidence using a diverse range of stimuli and different ways of liking measurements has accumulated in support of the mere exposure hypothesis since the publication of Zajonc’s monograph about it in 1968. Winkielman and Cacioppo(2001) suggest in their hedonic fluency model that it is the processing fluency facilitated by mere exposure that elicits a hedonically positive affect and thus leads to increases in liking in the mere-exposure effect.According to the hedonic fluency model, the size of mere-exposure effects obtained is expected to be larger when the initial presentation of the stimuli is longer so that more information can be encoded and processing fluency later can be enhanced. In spite of evidence in support of the hedonic fluency model, contradictory findings showing the size of mere-exposure effects obtained under subliminal or suboptimal conditions larger than that obtained when presentations are supraliminal or optimal.To explain the contradiction, we propose that representational fluency based on constructing new representation and recognitional fluency based on retrieval in the hedonic fluency model should be differentiated and representational fluency was able to elicit stronger positive affect than recognitional fluency. Two experiments using modified Hindi characters and simplified object pictures as experimental material demonstrated that:(1) when fluently processed, the novel stimuli were rated more likable than the familiar ones; (2) when the cognitive process is not so fluent, subjects preferred the familiar stimuli to the novel ones; (3) the more fluently processed stimuli were more positively rated; (4) representational fluency leaded to larger increase in liking than recognitional fluency.