Indirect and subliminal mere exposure effect: implicit aspect of attitude formation. Patrick Chambres Delphine Bonin Karine Grenier

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1 Indirect and subliminal mere exposure effect: implicit aspect of attitude formation Patrick Chambres Delphine Bonin Karine Grenier Université Blaise Pascal Author s note Patrick Chambres, Delphine Bonin and Karine Grenier, Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale de la Cognition, CNRS UPRES-A 6024, Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand 2, FRANCE. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Patrick Chambres, Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale de la Cognition, CNRS UPRES-A 6024, 34 avenue Carnot, Clermont-Ferrand Cedex, France. Electronic mail may be sent to chambres@srvpsy.univ-bpclermont.fr Fax (33) Phone (33)

2 Implicit Aspect of Attitude p.2 Abstract The experiments reported in this article fall within the scope of the general question of implicit attitude formation. Two studies investigate the extent to which mere exposure effects emerge in implicit stimulus exposure situations. In both experiments, half of the participants were directly and repeatedly exposed to 2 complex visual patterns, which were identified as standards, and the other half were indirectly exposed to these standards in a distorted form. The exposure duration was either supraliminal or subliminal. The results indicate that, in each implicit exposure situation, a mere exposure effect emerged. In the most implicit condition, where indirect exposure and subliminal presentation were combined, participants still generated positive attitudes toward the standards. In the explicit exposure situation (supraliminal and direct exposure), no significant mere exposure effect occurred. These results are discussed in the context of Bornstein and D Agostino s model (1994). Key reference terms Attitude Mere exposure effect Implicit processing

3 Chambres, Bonin & Grenier p. 3 The 2 experiments presented represent an approach to 3 fundamental questions: Why do people like specific things? Why do they not like others? Why are they sometimes unable to explain the reason why they like or dislike something? The third question was examined here primarily through the use of the concept of attitude. An attitude is generally defined as a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor (e.g. Allport, 1935; Eagly & Chaiken, 1993; Thurstone, 1931). Among very many studies conducted in the field of attitude, a number of experimental results have suggested that the attitude formation process could occur even when the attitude object has not been processed in an analytical way. For instance, within a classical conditioning procedure, an attitude toward an initially neutral stimulus becomes more positive after repeated pairings with other positive objects or events (e.g., Cacioppo, Marshall-Goodell, Tassinary & Petty, 1992; Krosnick, Betz, Jussim & Lynn, 1992; Staats & Staats, 1958; Zanna, Kiesler & Pilkonis, 1970). An attitude toward an object can also emerge after simple repeated unreinforced exposure to that object (Grush, 1976; Saegert, Swap & Zajonc, 1973; Stang, & O Connell 1974; Stang, 1975; Zajonc, 1968). This phenomenon is the well-known mere exposure effect. As far as the processes of attitude formation is concerned, one question has given rise to much controversy: Do such processes, which do not require a rational analysis of the object's characteristics, nevertheless involve a conscious processing of that object? Many studies have been performed to examine this fundamental question (e.g., Bornstein, 1989; Bornstein, Leone & Galley, 1987; Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, 1980; Mandler, Nakamura & Van Zandt, 1987; Murphy, Monahan & Zajonc, 1995; Seamon, Marsh & Brody, 1984; Wilson, 1979). In most of the experiments, the level of consciousness of the stimulus was manipulated by comparing subliminal and supraliminal presentations.

4 Implicit Aspect of Attitude p.4 In the literature on mere exposure, opinions are divided. Authors such as Harrison (1967, 1968) and Berlyne (1970, 1971) have proposed models of exposure effects in which they imply that the relationship between the stimulus exposure frequency and the resulting attitude is mediated by a prior cognitive process: that of stimulus recognition. According to them, awareness of the attitude object is a prerequisite for obtaining a positive attitude toward this object after its simple repeated presentation. Other findings have seriously challenged this dependence relationship between stimulus recognition and attitude elaboration. For example, Moreland and Zajonc (1977) have shown that stimulus recognition is a sufficient, but not a necessary, condition for observing an exposure effect. Similarly, Wilson (1979) found that repeated auditory stimuli were preferred even when their recognition was modified by means of a dichotic-listening procedure. Moreover, Bornstein (1989, 1992) has performed meta-analyses of mere exposure research and found that the magnitude of the exposure effect produced by subliminally-presented stimuli is far larger than the magnitude of the exposure effect produced by briefly-presented stimuli that were clearly recognized by participants. Such a finding suggests that, contrary to Harrison and Berlyne s viewpoint, the awareness of stimulus content could somehow inhibit the obtained effect (Bornstein & D Agostino, 1992). In their perceptual fluency/attributional model, Bornstein & D Agostino (1994) advanced that, when stimuli are presented in an explicit way (i.e. supraliminal presentations), participants are consciously aware of just having seen the stimuli that they have to rate. Thus, they can attribute their affective reaction toward the stimuli to these prior exposures. In such cases, participants are inclined to initiate a correction process in order to review their initial evaluation of the stimuli. Such a strategy leads individuals to change their spontaneous judgment by reducing the level of positive assessment of the stimulus. In contrast, in a subliminal exposure

5 Chambres, Bonin & Grenier p. 5 study, participants do not consciously perceive the repeated stimulus presentations. Their reaction toward the stimulus cannot be attributed to the repeated exposure and no correction process is implemented. The key variable which is responsible for the enhanced mere exposure effect in studies using subliminal material is not the stimulus subliminality per se, but rather the subject s lack of awareness of the relationship between the repeated stimulus exposure and the subsequent attitudes (e.g., Bargh, 1992; Bowers, 1984). In connection with this vexed question of consciousness in the mere exposure effect, an experiment conducted by Gordon & Holyoak (1983) proved to be interesting insofar as some of the results confirmed specific propositions of the Bornstein and D Agostino model while others invalidated other aspects of this model. In their study, a new condition of implicit stimulus exposure was created. The attitude object was not presented directly. Participants were only exposed to various distortions of the standard object presented in a supraliminal manner. They were then asked to rate the standard object and certain of its distorted variants which they had not seen directly. The greater the similarity between the distorted object and the standard, the more favorable its affective rating was. This result is in accordance with the contention that the implicit nature of the stimulus repetition is due not only to the subliminality of the stimulus but also, and more importantly, to stimulus exposure conditions which are sufficiently subtle to make subjects unaware of the relationship between prior presentations and the evaluation of the stimulus. However, one of Gordon and Holyoak s findings sits uneasily with the Bornstein & D Agostino model. Indeed, these authors found that the evaluation of the standard object was the same for both direct and indirect exposure. According to Bornstein & D Agostino, participants who saw the standard object several times should have become aware of the relationship between prior presentations of the object and their positive spontaneous evaluation. Thus, they should have

6 Implicit Aspect of Attitude p.6 implemented a correction process and rated the object less favorably than the participants who were not conscious of the repeated character of the stimulus presentation. In order to examine in greater detail the contradiction between Gordon and Holyoak s findings (1983) and the Bornstein & D Agostino model (1994), Gordon & Holyoak s experiment was replicated. To preserve the integrity of the previous procedure, the stimulus exposure frequency was also studied. The purpose of this first experiment was (1) to check the occurrence of exposure effects in a supraliminal but indirect exposure situation, (2) to shed light on whether or not the attitudes obtained in implicit exposure conditions are more positive than in totally explicit conditions. In a second experiment, designed to further investigate the limits of exposure effect occurrence in extremely implicit situations, the implicit character of the stimulus exposure was increased. Subliminal and indirect stimulus presentation were combined. The goal was to examine whether more polarized attitudes might occur in such a condition or, on the contrary, whether there is a boundary beyond which the polarization effect is stabilized. Experiment 1 As in Gordon & Holyoak s study, in the first phase of the experiment (exposure phase), the participants were asked to watch stimuli displayed on a computer screen. In the second phase (test phase), the participants had to give an affective rating of a new set of stimuli. Each participant was tested individually in a session lasting about 30 minutes.

7 Chambres, Bonin & Grenier p. 7 Method Participants The participants consisted of 40 volunteer undergraduate students (25 females and 15 males) attending introductory psychology classes at the University Blaise Pascal in Clermont- Ferrand (France). Material and Procedure Material: 88 matrices consisting of one hundred squares (10x10) generated from 2 standard matrices (A and B) were used. Both standards consisted of fifty randomly chosen blue squares and another fifty orange squares. Eighty-eight distortions of the two standards were created by inverting the color of a number of randomly selected squares. In accordance with Gordon & Holyoak s procedure, 68% of the stimuli corresponded to distortions of less than 9% (3, 5 and 6%), 27% of the stimuli were distortions of between 9% and 15% (9, 10, 11, 12 and 14%), and 5% of the stimuli involved distortions of 29%. Exposure phase: Two methods of exposure were employed. In the abstraction condition, half of the participants were exposed to distortions of the 2 standard matrices. They never saw the standards on their own. In the repetition condition, the other half of the participants were exposed only to repeated presentations of standards A and B. In both exposure conditions, half of the participants were exposed 40 times to the standard A or its distortions, and 20 times to the standard B or its distortions. The proportions were reversed for the other participants. The participants were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions generated by the factorial combination of the exposure condition (abstraction or repetition) and

8 Implicit Aspect of Attitude p.8 the frequency of exposure (high or low). They were asked to simply look at the colored pictures appearing on the computer screen. Each stimulus was presented for 3 seconds and a blank mask appeared for 2 seconds between every two trials. Test phase: This phase was the same for the four experimental conditions. A set of 10 matrices was presented to the participants: standards A and B, plus 5, 10, 25 and 50% distortions of each. The matrices were presented for 5 seconds, in a random order. The participants then had to rate how much they liked each of these stimuli on a 7-point scale (0: I don t like it at all to 6: I like it very much ) by pressing one of the 7 keyboard keys that corresponded to the seven points of the scale. The next stimulus was presented 2 seconds after the subject s response. The affective ratings were recorded. Results and Discussion The data (see Figure 1) for each exposure condition were processed in separate analyses of variance with three within-participants factors (the 2 frequencies of presentation - low vs high, the 2 standards - A vs B, and the 5 distortion levels of test stimuli - 0, 5, 10, 25 vs 50%). In the abstraction condition, there was a significant main effect of the distortion level of the test matrices, F(4,18) = 4.52, p<.003. The more interesting result concerned the planned comparisons which revealed that the standards were preferred (m = 3.525) in comparison to all the other test matrices (m = 2.756), F(1, 18) = , p<.002. The participants also rated the low-distortion test matrices (5 and 10 %) significantly more positively (m = 3.00) than the highdistortion test stimuli (25 and 50 %; m = 2.51), F(1,18) = 5.166, p =.026. A linear-trend test showed a significant decrease of the affective ratings of the test matrices with the increase of the distortion level from the standard, t (20) = , p =.013. In line with Gordon & Holyoak s

9 Chambres, Bonin & Grenier p. 9 results (1983), the most negative rating was attributed to the 25% distortion (m = 2.3) and this evaluation was significantly different from the rating of the standard (m = 3.525), F (1,18) = , p< The pattern of results in the repetition condition proved to be similar to that observed in the abstraction condition, but neither the main effect of distortion level, nor the linear-trend test reached significance, F(4, 18) = 0.36, ns, and t(20) = , ns, respectively. This lack of significance is partly due to the very high variance observed in the repetition condition, especially in the standards evaluations. A closer inspection of the responses of subjects in the repetition condition revealed an inverted response pattern for four subjects in comparison with the rest of subjects. For these four subjects, the liking ratings of the matrices increased with increases in the distortion level. Thus their mean rating of the two standards (m = 0,875) was smaller than their mean rating of the two 25% distortion matrices (m = 3,125). One account of the behavior of these four subjects is that, perhaps because they felt as if some of the test items were previously displayed, they spontaneously based their attitude toward the stimuli on a feeling of familiarity rather than on stimuli features (Whittlesea, 1993). This may have triggered a correction process leading them to change their judgment by reducing their evaluation of the stimulus. Similar correction strategies, which often lead to contrast effects, have been documented in the literature on social judgment. Specifically, when individuals are made aware of the impact of some primed material on their judgments, they tend to over-correct for such influences (Lombardi, Higgins & Bargh, 1987 ; Martin, 1986; Martin, Seta & Crelia, 1990 ; Ottati & Isbell, 1996; Schwarz & Bless, 1992; Strack, Schwarz, Bless, Kübler & Wänke, 1993). Thus, from the moment that individuals perceive that their judgments are influenced by factors other than the intrinsic features of the object, they try to eliminate this biasing effect.

10 Implicit Aspect of Attitude p.10 When the four subjects who made contrasted evaluations were discarded from the analysis, a main effect of the distortion level emerged, F(4,15) = 5,371, p<.001, and, as predicted by the mere exposure phenomenon, the standard matrices (m = 3,47) were preferred to the other matrices (m = 2,6485), F(1,15) = 13,217, p< Insert Figure 1 about here The results accord only in part with Gordon and Holyoak s findings (1983). In the abstraction condition, participants elaborated a more positive attitude toward this central stimulus than toward the distortions themselves. However, in the repetition condition, even if the general pattern of results is in accordance with the mere exposure effect, no reliable preference for the standard was observed. Thus, as Bornstein & D Agostino (1994) suggested, it seems that some participants became aware of the reasons for their positive reaction to this stimulus. In order to avoid this biasing influence, they deliberately implemented a correction process by decreasing the favorability of their attitude toward the stimulus. Observing a global significant mere exposure effect in supraliminal exposition conditions depends on the number of participants who engaged in a correction process when they became aware of the items previously displayed Even though Gordon & Holyoak did not discuss this difference, their study and the present experiment showed that, in both exposure conditions, participants evaluated the 50% distortions more highly than the 25% matrices. Moreover, an additional study in which independent participants were asked to rate the test matrices without being exposed to prior stimulus presentations revealed 2 complementary results: -First, it appeared that the affective rating of the 25% matrices produced in the abstraction condition was significantly less positive (m=2.3) than the affective rating of these same

11 Chambres, Bonin & Grenier p. 11 matrices in the non exposure condition (m=3.0), F(1,28) = 3.969, p<.05. This indicates that participants developed a negative value toward the high-distortion matrices. -Second, there was no difference between the evaluation of the 50% distortions in the abstraction condition (m=2.725) and in the non-exposure condition (m=2.3), F(1,28) = 1.463, ns. All these data support the idea that when people are repeatedly exposed to a specific object, they are led to evaluate this object positively (classical mere exposure effect). When they have to evaluate another object similar enough to be compared with the presented object, one of two possibilities may occur. First, when the level of similarity is high, people assimilate the object for evaluation to the previously presented object and again produce a positive evaluation, albeit to a lesser extent. Second, when the similarity is low, people contrast the two objects and are then led to evaluate the stimulus negatively. When the test stimulus becomes too different from the previously presented object, another judgment strategy is implemented and replaces the usual comparison process. In this case, people process the object as it had never been seen before, leading generally to an intermediate evaluation. It should be noted that in context of this experiment, a 50% distortion stimulus represented a matrix that was totally different from the standard. Thus, the results of this first experiment support Bornstein & D Agostino's point of view: when stimuli are presented in an explicit way, the mere exposure effect is inhibited. Moreover, they also support the idea that when an evaluated object is totally different from the previously presented standard, no comparison seems to occur and no negative exposure effect is observed. A second experiment was designed to help us gain a better understanding of these phenomena. The goal was first to examine the influence of a more implicit mere exposure on object evaluation and, second, to identify the distorsion at which the negative mere exposure effect disappears.

12 Implicit Aspect of Attitude p.12 Experiment 2 Three main changes were made compared to Experiment 1: (i) in both exposure conditions, the stimuli were presented subliminally, (ii) in the abstraction condition, the implicit character of the exposure situation was accentuated by presenting the stimuli in an indirect manner, (iii) to examine in greater detail the shape of the linear trend observed in Experiment 1, the test matrices differed from each other but had the same distortion interval (0, 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50%). Moreover, a forced-choice test of awareness (Eriksen, 1980; Murphy, Monahan & Zajonc, 1995; Murphy & Zajonc, 1993) was carried out to check that the 80 ms presentation of the experimental matrices during the first phase of the experiment was indeed below the threshold of conscious awareness. Method Participants Forty undergraduate students (37 females and 3 males) attending Psychology courses at the Blaise Pascal University of Clermont-Ferrand (France) voluntarily participated in the experiment. Procedure

13 Chambres, Bonin & Grenier p. 13 The matrices were presented subliminally for 80 ms. Each trial began with the presentation of a mask displayed for 1500 ms in the center of the screen. This mask consisted of a draughtboard composed of blue and orange squares. A matrix was then presented and remained displayed for 80 ms. Finally, the mask appeared again for 1000 ms. In order to make sure that the participants would continue to concentrate throughout the exposure phase, they were told that in each trial a word would appear very quickly in the center of the draughtboard, so quickly that it would not be properly legible. Next, another word would be displayed but would remain visible for longer and the participants' task was to categorize it as an old word (the word briefly seen before) or as a new word (a different word) by pressing the corresponding button on the keyboard. The participants heard these instructions and then performed 4 practice trials involving items which would not be used in the experimental phase. There then followed 60 experimental trials (40 presentations of a standard - or distorted variants of it - and 20 presentations of the other standard -or distorted variants of it). Forced-choice test of awareness: 36 independent participants were informed that they would be given a series of trials in which pictures would appear briefly. Each picture was preceded and followed by a draughtboard which acted as a mask. As in the experiment itself, each trial began with a 1500 ms presentation of the mask immediately followed by the exposure of the target stimulus. These target stimuli consisted of 20 distortion matrices of standards A and B. For half of the participants, the target stimulus exposure duration was 80 ms (subliminal condition) and for the other half, it was 3000 ms (supraliminal condition). After a 1000 ms exposure to the backward mask, the participants were presented with two test stimuli: a matrix which actually matched the target stimulus presented between previously presented masks on one side of the

14 Implicit Aspect of Attitude p.14 screen and a 25% distortion of this matrix on the other side. The participants were then asked to identify the matrix which they had just seen. The rationale underlying the forced-choice test was that if the participants truly cannot detect the subliminally presented stimulus, then their performance in recognizing should not exceed random response levels. Results and Discussion Forced-choice test of awareness - analyses Participants in the subliminal condition (80 ms) scored an average of 9.06 correct out of a possible 20, which is not significantly different from a chance score of 10 (t(17) = 1.39, p>.10). Participants in the supraliminal condition (3000 ms) scored an average of 18.61, which is significantly better than the chance score (t(17) = , p<.0001). This result demonstrates that with a 80 ms stimulus exposure, participants were unable to distinguish between a matrix presented 1 sec earlier and another new matrix whereas they could make this distinction when the stimulus was presented for 3000 ms. Affective rating - analyses A 2 x 2 x 5 Anova was performed for each exposure condition. These analyses revealed no significant main effect of the distortion level of the test matrices (Abstraction: F (4,18) = 1.752, ns; Repetition: F (4,18) = 2.185, p=.06). Nevertheless, in both exposure conditions, planned comparisons indicated a significant preference for the standard matrices (Abstraction, m = 3.125; Repetition, m = 3.0) over all the other matrices (Abstraction, m = 2.645, F (1,18) = 3.747, p=.05; Repetition, m = 2.435, F(1,18) = 7.515, p=.0074). In particular, the standard

15 Chambres, Bonin & Grenier p. 15 matrices were evaluated more positively than the 30% distortion matrices (Abstraction, m = 2.225, F(1,18) = 7.905, p =.006; Repetition, m = 2.3, F(1,18) = 6.921, p =.01) Insert Figure 2 about here As in many other studies (Bornstein, 1989, 1992; Bornstein, Leone & Galley, 1987; Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, 1980; Mandler, Nakamura & van Zandt, 1987; Seamon, Marsh & Brody, 1984), the results obtained in the repetition condition provide an additional demonstration of the occurrence of the mere exposure effect in an implicit stimulus exposure situation. More interestingly, the data (see Figure 2) show that it was in the abstraction condition, i.e., through indirect and subliminal presentation of the attitude object, that the participants elaborated the most positive attitudes toward the standard objects. On the other hand, a negative linear trend between the distortion level of the test matrices and the evaluation of these matrices was observed up to the 30% distortion level. There was then an increase of the affective ratings for the 40 and 50% distortion. The linear trend was marginally significant in the abstraction condition, t (19) = -1.86, p =.07. It did not reach significance in the repetition condition, t(19) = -1,34, p>.05. The most negative evaluations were attributed to the 30% distortion levels. Beyond these levels, participants rated the stimuli more positively, which suggests that the repeated exposure to a standard stimulus did not influence the evaluation of excessively distorted stimuli. General Discussion and Conclusion

16 Implicit Aspect of Attitude p.16 The pattern of results obtained in the present experiments sheds new light on the discussion of the role of stimulus consciousness in the mere exposure effect and more generally in attitude formation. One of these results allows us to resolve the question that confronted Gordon and Holyoak (1983) and Bornstein & D Agostino (1994) concerning the occurrence of the exposure effect in fully explicit stimulus exposure situations. Indeed, in the supraliminal repetition condition (experiment 1), no significant difference was found between the affective ratings of the standard objects and the other test objects. Such a finding clearly support Bornstein & D Agostino s conception according to which stimulus awareness somehow inhibits the exposure effect. On the other hand, and as reported in many earlier studies (e.g., Bornstein, 1989, 1992; Bornstein, Leone & Galley, 1987; Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, 1980; Mandler, Nakamura & Van Zandt, 198; Seamon, Marsh & Brody, 1984), participants placed in the subliminal repetition condition (experiment 2) reported a significant preference for the objects to which they had been subliminally exposed. More interestingly, in the subliminal abstraction condition (experiment 2), in which the participants could not perceive the stimulus in a conscious way and, moreover, were never exposed directly to this stimulus, they generated a more positive attitude toward this stimulus than towards the other distortions. Taken together, these experiments indicate that the exposure effect is so robust a phenomenon that it may be elicited even in extremely implicit exposure situations and, more generally, our results seem to suggest that stimulus consciousness is not required for the elaboration of attitudes. Overall, this research indicates that attitudes can be generated without individuals performing a detailed analysis of the object and without their consciously processing this object. Highly implicit, repeated exposure to an object is sufficient to affect the subsequent attitude. It is

17 Chambres, Bonin & Grenier p. 17 interesting to note that less positive affect ratings are consistently observed the more the object for evaluation differs from the previously and implicitly presented object. Nevertheless, this phenomenon vanishes when the object to be evaluated is no longer comparable to the repeated object. These findings support the idea that when people rate objects, they base their attitudinal response on different mechanisms. When the object is sufficiently similar to a specific object to which they have previously been exposed, a comparative judgment with the latter occurs. When there is not sufficient similarity between the two objects, people formulate more absolute judgments without implementing a comparison process. Clearly more data needs to be collected in order to confirm this phenomenon, and further studies should be carried out to identify the underlying processes. Researchers still have to work hard to provide significant answers to the 3 introductory questions: Why do people like specific things? Why do they not like others? Why are they sometimes unable to explain the reason why they like or dislike something?

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22 Implicit Aspect of Attitude p.22 3,8 3,6 3,4 Abstraction Répétition 3,2 3 2,8 2,6 2,4 2,2 2 0% 5% 10% 25% 50% Figure 1: Mean Affective Rating for test matrices as a function of the exposure condition and the distortion level in Study 1

23 Chambres, Bonin & Grenier p. 23 3,2 3 Abstraction Répétition 2,8 2,6 2,4 2,2 2 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% Figure 2: Mean Affective Rating for test matrices as a function of the exposure condition and the distortion level in Study 2