Implicit Learning and Generalization of the "Mere Exposure" Effect

Two experiments are reported in which the generalization of the "mere exposure" effect is examined. Both experiments demonstrated that positive affect, produced by repeated viewing of a set of stimuli, generalizes to previously unseen stimuli that are similar along certain abstract dimensions to the exposed stimuli. The first experiment used letter strings constructed according to a complex rule system. Positive affect attributable to exposure generalized to novel letter strings that obeyed the rule system. Affective generalization was related to subjects'judgments of whether the novel strings obeyed the rule system. The second experiment, in which the stimuli were complex visual patterns created by distorting standard forms, yielded an orderly gradient of affective generalization to novel patterns at varying levels of distortion. These experiments indicate that the exposure effect behaves in a manner similar to "implicit" concept learning and rule induction. The generalization techniques developed here provide a novel method for studying the affective processing of stimuli.