Analyzing but Not Buying: The Mere Exposure Effect on Children’s Behavior in an Ecological Context

The mere exposure effect is usually considered a robust phenomenon whereby people’s attitudes can easily be influenced. However, recent studies suggest that some conditions must be met for this effect to emerge. In this experiment, the influence of the features of a specific material on the mere exposure effect was examined in an ecological context. Children were told that they would play a game during which they would have to buy several items in different shops. In these shops, half of the participants were incidentally exposed to two target stimuli. During a subsequent judgment phase, the target stimuli were presented to each child, either with perceptually similar items or with perceptually dissimilar items. Prior encounter with an item only influenced children’s preference choices when the test items were dissimilar. These findings are discussed in terms of the processing styles that are necessary for the mere exposure effect to appear.