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Effects of Perceptual Fluency on Affective Judgments
Abstract
According to a two-step account of the mere-exposure effect, repeated exposure leads to the subjective feeling of perceptual fluency, which in turn influences liking. If so, perceptual fluency manipulated by means other than repetition should influence liking. In three experiments, effects of perceptual fluency on affective judgments were examined. In Experiment 1, higher perceptual fluency was achieved by presenting a matching rather than nonmatching prime before showing a target picture. Participants judged targets as prettier if preceded by a matching rather than nonmatching prime. In Experi- ment 2, perceptual fluency was manipulated by figure-ground contrast. Stimuli were judged as more pretty, and less ugly, the higher the con- trast. In Experiment 3, perceptual fluency was manipulated by presen- tation duration. Stimuli shown for a longer duration were liked more, and disliked less. We conclude (a) that perceptual fluency increases liking and (b) that the experience of fluency is affectively positive, and hence attributed to positive but not to negative features, as reflected in a differential impact on positive and negative judgments. 0
... Such increases in stimulus liking are presumably due to increases in the subjective ease with which the stimulus is processed, i.e., its processing fluency (Bornstein & D'Agostino, 1994; see Reber et al., 2004). Processing fluency, in turn, is experienced positively and increases stimulus liking (Reber et al., 1998;Whittlesea, 1993;Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001). Consequently, based on this fluency-as-positivity effect, we would predict that repeatedly seeing a CS after initial conditioning would increase CS fluency and thereby CS liking. ...
... Our hypothesis was confirmed, but only when participants rated stimulus fluency postconditioning (LFLF group). When controlling for stimulus fluency, the increase in liking of CSneut disappeared in this design, consistent with the notion that fluency accounted for the increase in liking of CSneut (Reber et al., 1998;Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001). Note that this latter interpretation is based on correlational evidence. ...
... Note that this latter interpretation is based on correlational evidence. Yet, in line with the fluency-as-positivity notion supported by previous experiments (Reber et al., 1998;Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001), our data did not support the opposite relation (i.e., reversed causality) because stimulus fluency did not depend on the conditioned valence of the stimuli (see footnote 4). Our results are therefore consistent with an influence of fluency on liking. ...
... Consumers' psychological distances when processing information can be influenced by various advertising appeals and narrative person [13,19], leading to different levels of construal. When consumers interpret information at the same level, they are likely to have a smooth processing experience, which in turn enhances their attitudes towards advertising [20,21]. Therefore, this study holds that in social media advertising, advertising appeal and narrative person have an interactive effect on consumer attitudes towards advertising, and information processing fluency serves as the mediating role in this relationship. ...
... When information is assimilated with ease, it may inadvertently elicit positive affective responses in individuals. These responses are subsequently ascribed to the informational entities themselves, culminating in enhanced predilections for such entities [20,51,52]. ...
... Previous research has shown that smooth information processing experiences elicit positive emotions in individuals and lead to better attitudes toward the object of information processing [20,53]. In social media advertising, the matching of advertisement appeal and narrative person brings smooth information processing and potentially increases consumer receptivity towards it. ...
The burgeoning landscape of social media advertising also faces a myriad of challenges. This study aims to explore the interactive effect of advertising appeal (abstract vs. concrete) and narrative person (first-person vs. third-person) on consumer attitudes towards social media advertising. Based on the construal level theory, this study uses secondary data and two experiments to investigate the interactive effect between advertising appeal and narrative person in social media advertising and the moderated mediating role of information processing fluency. The result reveals that a harmonious match between advertising appeal and narrative person enhances consumer fluency in processing advertising information, thereby improving consumer attitudes towards advertising. Specifically, for advertisements with concrete appeal, first-person narratives are more conducive to enhancing consumer attitudes towards advertising. Conversely, for advertisements with abstract appeal, third-person narratives are more advantageous. This study provides theoretical insights into social media advertising narration, with practical implications for marketers to advance social media advertising design.
... In experiments, fluency often is manipulated by one or several of these variables. In addition, fluency can be measured easily by recording response times to stimuli (e.g., Reber et al., 1998; but see Reber, 2012, for a critique) or asking participants about how easy they find it to process the stimuli; that is, how easily they can see an object, hear a word, read a text, or understand a statement (e.g., Graf et al., 2018). These measurements can then be used to assess to what extent preferences and beliefs may be explained by the fluency of the respective stimulus (e.g., Landwehr et al., 2017). ...
... A potential mechanism underlying the mere exposure effect is fluency. There is ample evidence that higher fluency yields more positive affect (e.g., Reber et al., 1998). How is fluency linked to positive affect? ...
... As mentioned earlier, the mere exposure effect denotes the observation that repeated exposure to stimuli leads to more positive affective judgments (Zajonc, 1968). This repetition effect has been linked to fluency (e.g., Reber et al., 1998). Mere exposure effects are larger when exposure remains subliminal or at a suboptimal level (e.g., Hansen & Wänke, 2009; see Bornstein, 1989), making it unlikely that fluency is based on higher-order cognitive processes. ...
... ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.05.04.652128 doi: bioRxiv preprint Scenario 2: Statistical learning and preference formation Statistical learning is the process by which an organism implicitly learns regularities in sensory input, shaping future expectations (Turk-Browne, 2012). When an input aligns well with learned patterns, this match triggers a positive affective response, as the sensory-cognitive systems are particularly suited to processing familiar features efficiently (Bornstein & Dagostino, 1992;Reber et al., 1998). Statistical learning thus subserves mere exposure effects, which refer to a tendency to develop liking for stimuli as a function of familiarity (Zajonc, 1968). ...
... The copyright holder for this preprint (which this version posted May 6, 2025. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.05.04.652128 doi: bioRxiv preprint Dayan (Brielmann & Dayan, 2022) mapped two processes known to contribute to art appreciation to these two components of reinforcement learning: processing fluency (Reber et al., 2004;Reber et al., 1998) informs immediate rewards while learning influences expected future rewards by facilitating future processing efficiency. Drawing on this parallel, the authors suggest that art experiences are processed in the brain similarly to how other rewarding experiences are handled in reinforcement learning, with hedonic value serving as a reward signal that guides future behaviour and preferences. ...
Assigning hedonic value shapes behaviour across organisms, yet how these values translate into motivated behaviour remains unclear. We introduce hedonic foraging as a mechanism by which hedonic evaluation guides behaviour via iterative reward maximisation. This framework integrates hedonic evaluation with active inference, whereby expected free energy encodes wanting—the motivational drive toward rewarding outcomes—while variational free energy corresponds to liking—the hedonic impact of the outcome. Hedonic foraging unifies the mechanisms underlying behaviours ranging from allostasis to art appreciation, casting cognition and motivated behaviour as purposive engagement with the environment and its affordances.
Long abstract
Hedonic evaluation shapes behaviour across organisms. Yet, the mechanisms that transform hedonic values into motivated behaviour remain poorly understood, and key questions remain unanswered. How do habits, wanting, and liking or disliking interact to generate behaviour? Do common principles govern behaviour across species and cognitive systems, from basic survival mechanisms to complex cultural endeavours? We propose a unifying theory of motivated behaviour that integrates hedonic evaluation with active inference—a framework in which perception, action and cognition emerge from the imperative to minimise free energy. We argue that variational free energy provides a natural measure of liking and disliking, while expected free energy encodes wanting—the motivational drive toward rewarding outcomes. This synthesis, which we term hedonic foraging , offers a principled explanation for how organisms navigate their environments based on pleasure-driven learning and decision-making. It posits that motivated behaviour emerges from the fundamental pursuit of maximising reward, with hedonic evaluation motivating and monitoring actions through wanting and liking mechanisms. We demonstrate that hedonic foraging captures a wide range of behaviours, from allostatic processes common to all animals to sophisticated human activities such as art appreciation and cultural exploration. Crucially, our integrative perspective fosters mutual enrichment between hedonic evaluation and active inference—two fundamental approaches to behaviour. Ultimately, hedonic foraging reinforces the view that cognition is essentially about purposive engagement in adaptive interactions with the environment and its affordances and offers a unified framework for investigating cognition and behaviour.
... This critical role of effort aligns with the well-documented preference for simplicity in aesthetics. The fluency theory posits that people prefer stimuli that are easily processed (Reber et al., 1998(Reber et al., , 2004, aligning with findings such as preferences for larger, higher-contrast, prototypical stimuli (Reber et al., 1998;Silvera et al., 2002), which presumably reduce the effort required for the task. In other words, when a mental process is accomplished fluently or effortlessly, it generates aesthetic appeal. ...
... This critical role of effort aligns with the well-documented preference for simplicity in aesthetics. The fluency theory posits that people prefer stimuli that are easily processed (Reber et al., 1998(Reber et al., , 2004, aligning with findings such as preferences for larger, higher-contrast, prototypical stimuli (Reber et al., 1998;Silvera et al., 2002), which presumably reduce the effort required for the task. In other words, when a mental process is accomplished fluently or effortlessly, it generates aesthetic appeal. ...
This study employs a recently developed comprehensive exploration approach to investigate aesthetic preferences among random spatial patterns. This method combines the strengths of artificial intelligence research—such as extensive data sets and iterative refinement—with the advantages of traditional cognitive studies, including interpretable models and meticulously controlled experiments. Specifically, 1,060 observers provided 42 million aesthetic preference judgments across 80,000 spatial patterns. A convolutional neural network explains nearly all (98.3%) of the data’s explainable variance. Notably, a three-component Quasi-Comprehensive Exploration of Aesthetic Preferences Among Spatial Patterns model also accounts for the majority (93.6%) of the explainable variance. The Quasi-Comprehensive Exploration of Aesthetic Preferences Among Spatial Patterns model reveals that aesthetic preferences among these spatial patterns are shaped by the regularity of items, incorporating three components: proximity, continuity, and linearity. Overall, these findings support an “effortless acquisition of information” perspective: the more information one can effortlessly extract from a visual stimulus, the more aesthetically appealing it tends to be.
... Some increase detectability [e.g. high visual contrast (Reber, Winkielman & Schwarz, 1998;Stevens & Ruxton, 2012)], others enhance recognizability and memorability (e.g. prototypicality; Winkielman et al., 2006), and yet others facilitate processing because they are redundant and predictable (Yoo, Jasko & Winkielman, 2024). ...
... Although most of the literature linking beauty with fluency in human cognitive psychology focuses on visual signals and preferences, the same principles appear to govern other sensory modalities. For example, perceptual fluency is thought to play a primary role in the pleasure of music (Reber et al., 1998). Moreover, music, an arguably 'disinterested' acoustic pleasure, activates the same regions of the brain as other rewarding stimuli like food and sex Biological Reviews (2025) 000-000 © 2025 Cambridge Philosophical Society. ...
The world around us is full of beauty. Explaining a sense of the beautiful has beguiled philosophers and artists for millennia, but scientists have also pondered beauty, most notably Darwin, who used beauty to describe sexual ornaments that he argued were the subject of female mate choice. In doing so, he ascribed a 'sense of the beautiful' to non-human animals. Darwin's ideas about mate choice and beauty were not widely accepted, however. Humans may experience beauty, but assuming the same about other animals risks anthropomorphism: we might find the tail of the peacock to be beautiful, but there is no reason to believe that peahens do. Moreover, mate choice, resurrected as an object of serious study in the 1970s, simply requires attraction, not necessarily beauty. However, recent advances in psychology and cognitive neuroscience are providing a new, mechanistic framework for beauty. Here we take these findings and apply them to evolutionary biology. First, we review progress in human empirical aesthetics to provide a biological definition of beauty. Central to this definition is the discovery that merely processing information can provide hedonic reward. As such, we propose that beauty is the pleasure of fluent information processing, independent of the function or consummatory reward provided by the stimulus. We develop this definition in the context of three key attributes of beauty (pleasure, interaction, and disinterestedness) and the psychological distinction between 'wanting' and 'liking'. Second, we show how beauty provides a new, proximate approach for studying the evolution of sexual signalling that can help us resolve some key problems, such as how mating biases evolve. We also situate beauty within a more general framework for the evolution of animal signals, suggesting that beauty may apply not only to sexual ornaments, but also to traits as diverse as aposematic signals and camouflage. Third, we outline a variety of experimental approaches to test whether animal signals are beautiful to their intended receivers, including tests of fluency and hedonic impact using behavioural and neurological approaches.
... However, it should be used cautiously, as although subjective fluency has a better impact on subjective judgments and differs from objective fluency, the two are still somewhat related. For example, an early study found the similar impact of objective fluency on liking by manipulating presentation duration of simple shapes in a single exposure paradigm (Reber et al., 1998). ...
... In fact, processing fluency and emotional response are not independent. According to Reber et al. (1998), higher processing fluency leads to greater liking and more positive emotions. A possible direction for future research would be to integrate emotional response into the theoretical framework of the present study to explore whether processing fluency influences aesthetic perception by inducing more positive emotions. ...
Aesthetic perception involves inputs from various senses, and the aesthetic perception of one sensory modality can be affected by information from another sensory modality. This phenomenon can be explained by crossmodal associations, with semantic and spatial correspondence playing important roles. However, the effects of both semantic and spatial congruency on aesthetic perception remained unclear. Here, a pre-registered experiment was conducted to investigate the influences of semantically and spatially congruent sounds on aesthetic perception of the pictures presented simultaneously and whether these influences were mediated by processing fluency. Participants were asked to evaluate the liking, aesthetic value, and processing fluency of pictures presented simultaneously with sounds under four conditions (spatial congruency/incongruency and semantic congruency/incongruency). The results indicated that the semantically congruent sounds increased the processing fluency, thereby leading to higher liking and aesthetic evaluation of pictures. However, a significant effect of spatial congruency was not observed. The null finding may suggest that the effect of spatial congruency was likely too small to be practically meaningful in aesthetic perception with unlimited response time, which might have caused participants to respond after the influence of spatial congruency had gradually faded. Another possible explanation is that, in comparison to spatial cues, the manipulation of semantic congruency better aligns with individuals’ learned expectations. Therefore, semantic cues that are more in line with expectations may be more easily observed to influence subjective evaluations.
... Take "liking" as one such consequence. Reber et al. (1998) and Reber and Schwarz (1999) found that stimuli against less contrastive backgrounds (i.e., visual unease) are liked less than counterparts against highly contrastive backgrounds. Similarly, harder to imagine travel destinations (i.e., visualization unease) are liked less than counterparts that are easy to imagine (Mandel et al., 2006;Petrova & Cialdini, 2005). ...
... It is worth noting indeed that different models of processing fluency make different predictions. As alluded already, the majority of the extant research finds that fluency produces favorable outcomes (Checkosky & Whitlock, 1973;Garner, 1974;Iyengar & Lepper, 2000; A. Y. Lee & Labroo, 2004;Mandel et al., 2006;Nunes et al., 2015;Reber et al., 1998Reber et al., , 2004Reber & Schwarz, 1999;Shen et al., 2010;Stuppy et al., 2024;White et al., 2011;Zajonc, 1968). By contrast, a small but mounting body of work suggests that disfluency may produce favorable outcomes (Alter, 2013;Alter et al., 2007;Bjork & Bjork, 2020;Graf & Landwehr, 2015;Markowitz, 2023). ...
What makes cultural products such as edutainment (i.e., online talks) successful versus not? Asked differently, which characteristics make certain addresses more (vs. less) appealing? Across 12 field and lab studies, we explore when, why, and for whom the information load carried in TED talks causes them to gain (vs. lose) popularity. First and foremost, we uncover a negative effect whereby increases in the number of topics broached in a talk (i.e., information load) hurt viewer adoption. The cause? Processing disfluency. As information load soars, content becomes more difficult to process, which in turn reduces interest. Probing process further, we show this effect fades among audience members with greater need for cognition, a personality trait marking a penchant for deep and broad information processing. Similarly, the effect fades among edutainment viewers favoring education goals (i.e., cognitive enrichment) whereas it amplifies among those favoring entertainment (i.e., hedonic pleasure). Our investigation also documents the counterintuitiveness of our findings (i.e., how individuals mispredict which talks they would actually [dis]like). From these results, we derive theoretical insights for processing fluency research and the psychology of cultural products adoption (i.e., we weigh in on when, why, and for whom fluency has favorable vs. unfavorable downstream effects). We also derive prescriptive insights for (a) players of the edutainment industry whose very business hinges on curating appealing content (e.g., TED, Talks@Google, The Moth, Big Think, Spotify) and (b) communicators of all creeds wishing to broaden their reach and appeal (e.g., professors, scientists, politicians, journalists, bloggers, podcasters, content editors, online community managers).
... A third possible model for BeMim effects looks towards more general brain and cognitive mechanisms that apply across all domains, not just social interactions. Several lines of research suggest that events which are fluent or predictable are easier to process and potentially more rewarding than events which are disfluent or unpredictable (Oppenheimer, 2008;Reber et al., 1998). This applies to perceptual tasks (Reber et al., 1998) but also to motor tasks. ...
... Several lines of research suggest that events which are fluent or predictable are easier to process and potentially more rewarding than events which are disfluent or unpredictable (Oppenheimer, 2008;Reber et al., 1998). This applies to perceptual tasks (Reber et al., 1998) but also to motor tasks. For example, priming actions increases fluency and the sense of agency (Chambon & Haggard, 2012), and can even influence purchasing decisions (Chen & Lin, 2021). ...
Being mimicked (BeMim) arises when one person copies the actions or choices of another person, and several studies link BeMim to liking and affiliation. BeMim effects might occur for matching of motor actions but have also been reported for the imitation of preferences and values. In this chapter we discuss various approaches to studying BeMim, from live interactions to controlled methods in the lab and from virtual reality to observation studies. We suggest that the fundamental cognitive mechanism that support BeMim effects is still unknown and it is not yet clear if various BeMim paradigms tap the same cognitive mechanisms. Three possible neurocognitive models of BeMim are considered: a specialized BeMim model, a universal model which is domain general based on cognitive predictability and a social learning model. The latter seems to be the most promising based on the current evidence. We highlight the non-monotonic character of the BeMim effects—there may be a “sweet spot” where BeMim has positive consequences but too much or too little mimicry can mean that the mimicker’s action is judged negatively rather than positively. People also dislike mimickers if they have awareness of being mimicking by them. Finally, we discuss the gaps in the BeMim literature that need to be addressed to move the BeMim field forward.
... Low-level features include contrast, lightness, saturation, color, etc. [1]; mid-level ones involve grouping, contours, segmentation, depth, etc. [2,3,4] and high-level features relate to object recognition and semantic associations [5]. These studies have shown that features such as color, contrast, saturation, aspect ratio, contour [6,7,8,9,10], image quality, anisotropy, complexity and fractal self-similarity [11,12,13] are modest predictors of aesthetic preference. Other features that seem to predict preferences are symmetry [14], which is preferred on abstract geometrical patterns [15] and faces [16], and smoothly curved contours, which are preferred over angular contours [17,18,19,20]. ...
While it is easy for human observers to judge an image as beautiful or ugly, aesthetic decisions result from a combination of entangled perceptual and cognitive (semantic) factors, making the understanding of aesthetic judgements particularly challenging from a scientific point of view. Furthermore, our research shows a prevailing bias in current databases, which include mostly beautiful images, further complicating the study and prediction of aesthetic responses. We address these limitations by creating a database of images with minimal semantic content and devising, and next exploiting, a method to generate images on the ugly side of aesthetic valuations. The resulting Minimum Semantic Content (MSC) database consists of a large and balanced collection of 10,426 images, each evaluated by 100 observers. We next use established image metrics to demonstrate how augmenting an image set biased towards beautiful images with ugly images can modify, or even invert, an observed relationship between image features and aesthetics valuation. Taken together, our study reveals that works in empirical aesthetics attempting to link image content and aesthetic judgements may magnify, underestimate, or simply miss interesting effects due to a limitation of the range of aesthetic values they consider.
... For instance, the perceptual fluency account proposes potential information processing benefits that are gained after interacting with nature (Joye, 2007;Joye & van den Berg, 2011). Building on broader work regarding how perceptual fluency contributes to positive affect (Reber et al., 1998), this theory suggests that nature is restorative because it is easier for people to process the visual information they see in natural compared to urban environments. In this account, cognitive restoration and stress reduction are essentially byproducts of enhanced positive affect driven by perceptual fluency. ...
The surrounding environment influences how people feel, think, and behave. This effect is apparent when examining the multitude of ways interactions with natural environments impact people psychologically. In this Research Dialogue, we discuss work by ourselves and others that demonstrate the benefits of spending time in nature or interacting with natural stimuli, across three psychological domains. First, we discuss affective benefits, such as improved mood and decreased stress and rumination. Then, we discuss cognitive benefits, such as improved working memory. Lastly, we discuss social benefits, such as prosocial and proenvironmental attitudes. We introduce several environmental psychology theories that try to explain why these benefits occur. We present our own work that attempts to determine what characteristics of natural environments cause or are related to these effects by quantifying distinguishing characteristics of natural versus built environments along a variety of dimensions. We then investigate how these dimensions influence the psychological experience in a more natural versus a more built environment. We end by outlining the implications of the benefits of interacting with nature in influencing consumer behaviors.
... This suggests that as individuals become more experienced with a particular food, their sensory system becomes more attuned to detecting nuanced attributes, potentially reinforcing their preference for the food. This has been related to perceptual fluency (McKean et al., 2020;Reber et al., 1998), which refers to the subjective feeling of ease or difficulty when processing sensory information. ...
This review explores how perceptual learning contributes to the development of liking for novel and unfamiliar foods. Food acceptance evolves dynamically with repeated exposure. Repeated exposure significantly enhances the acceptance of novel and unfamiliar foods through perceptual changes, as evidenced by empirical studies and theoretical frameworks. Repeated exposure facilitates perceptual learning by enhancing the ability to detect specific sensory attributes and to filter out irrelevant features. The impact of perceptual learning is noticeable in the wine industry, where trained experts demonstrate superior detection, differentiation, and identification skills. This acquired perception influenced consumer acceptance, appreciation, and quality evaluation by providing richer attributes for constructing mental representations of food. However, investigating the mechanisms behind the effect of perceptual learning on liking is challenging, due to complex interplay between cognitive and perceptual inputs. Future studies should extend beyond wine to better understand how perceptual learning shapes food choice driven by liking and appreciation.
... evaluation, leading individuals to judge repeated statements as more likely to be true in comparison to newly encountered statements (Unkelbach et al., 2010;Reber et al., 1998;Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001;Reber et al., 2004). ...
People judge repeated statements as more true than new ones. This repetition-based truth effect is a robust phenomenon when statements are ambiguous. However, previous studies provided conflicting evidence on whether repetition similarly affects truth judgments for plausible and implausible statements. Given the lack of a formal theory explaining the interaction between repetition and plausibility on the truth effect, it is important to develop a model specifying the assumptions regarding this phenomenon. In this study, we propose a Bayesian model that formalizes the simulation-based model by Fazio, Rand, and Pennycook (2019; Psychonomic Bulletin & Review ). The model specifies how repetition and plausibility jointly influence the truth effect in light of nonlinear transformations of binary truth judgments. We test our model in a reanalysis of experimental data from two previous studies by computing Bayes factors for four competing model variants. Our findings indicate that, while the truth effect is usually larger for ambiguous than for highly implausible or plausible statements on the probability scale, it can simultaneously be constant for all statements on the probit scale. Hence, the interaction between repetition and plausibility may be explained by a constant additive effect of repetition on a latent probit scale.
... The first hypothesis suggests that smiling masks might foster positive perceptions, as they convey richer facial expression information than standard masks. In this regard, earlier research has shown that a higher volume of information typically triggers pleasant reactions (Biederman & Vessel, 2006), and this enhanced information may foster higher processing fluency (Zhou et al., 2012), which could in turn induce positive responses (Reber et al., 1998). Hence, the richer facial cues provided by smiling masks could lead to positive evaluations. ...
Wearing a mask often disrupts social interactions because it covers parts of the face. Hence, masks with a printed smiling mouth (smiling masks) were designed to overcome this problem. In this study, we examine how wearing a smiling mask evokes affective impressions. The results show that people wearing a smiling mask are evaluated more eerily than those with a typical cloth mask or without any masks (Experiments 1). Moreover, people wearing a transparent mask (i.e., a mask whose area around the mouth is transparent) are evaluated less eerily than those with a smiling mask (Experiments 2). Our findings suggest that the realism inconsistency between facial features in the upper area and the printed mouth causes devaluation effects for people with a smiling mask. Our findings can be used as a reference for future mask designs that can promote healthy social interactions in a mask-wearing society, considering the potential return of infectious diseases and pandemics in the future.
... TRADITIONALLY, research in the field of empirical aesthetics has consistently shown that people overall tend to prefer stimuli that are more frequent (Zajonc, 1968), processed more fluently (Reber et al., 1998), or intermediate in complexity (Berlyne, 1971). Abstract attributes like familiarity, fluency, and complexity can refer to stimuli of potentially any nature, domain, and sensory modality. ...
It is typically assumed in the empirical aesthetics literature that generalizable abstract stimulus attributes like familiarity, fluency, and complexity drive preferences. This general nature means that they can, at least in principle, apply to any stimulus regardless of its characteristics and sensory modality. However, most studies in this tradition are restricted to group-level trends and particular stimulus properties. Therefore, they say nothing about amodal or general preferences for particular levels of such abstract attributes independently from their characterization at the individual level. Moreover, the hypothesis of a general, amodal preference for attributes like complexity was not empirically supported and only scarcely tested until we provided empirical evidence against it in our Clemente et al. (2021) study. In their quest for empirical evidence in favor of a preference for complexity across the auditory and visual modalities, Friedman et al. (2024) made two central claims: First, they found it surprising that aesthetic sensitivity for visual and musical complexity did not correlate in our study. Second, they expressed concerns about the comparability of the musical and visual stimuli we used. In this commentary, I show how these claims and the premises on which they rely are debatable and how the results of Friedman et al. (2024) support our conclusion that stimulus information rather than abstract attributes like complexity drive evaluative judgments such as liking.
... One critical question in this regard is, what are the mental computational processes that give rise to these metacognitive feelings? If these metacognitive feelings are calculated by relatively simple algorithms such as familiarity or fluency (Reber, Winkielman, & Schwarz, 1998), then it is possible that they serve as important heuristics for us to efficiently reduce uncertainty in our knowledge (see also our response to van Lieshout et al.). In fact, Shenhav (2024) recently argued that the "goal" concept in decision-making literature may be an emergent property which is produced by individuals' affective associations. ...
Many motivational constructs are opaque “black boxes,” and should be replaced by an explicit account of the underlying psychological mechanisms. The theory of motivational systems has begun to provide such an account. I recently contributed to this tradition with a general architecture of motivation, which connects “energization” and “direction” through the goal-setting activity of emotions, and serves as an evolutionary grounded map of motivational processes.
... (Reber, Winkielman, & Schwarz, 1998;Zajonc, 1968연구 결과 . Ⅲ1. -.08 ** -.05 ** .02 ...
[Purpose] The purpose of this study is to explore the determinants of sports betting revenue maximization by analyzing data from Keirin racing, one of the major sports betting events in Korea. Through this research, we aim to propose strategic management that can be formulated and implemented to maximize revenue from the supplier's perspective. Specifically, we examine the relationship between the level of players, races, and minimum odds per win on revenue to draw implications for maximizing revenue in the sports betting industry. [Methods] The study analyzes the data of 7,219 races and corresponding sales, conducted at Gwangmyeong Speedom from January 3, 2020, to August 18, 2024. Variables related to individual athletes, as shown on the race card, and race-level variables that represent the gap between athletes and the competitive intensity were used as independent variables for the race revenue. Specifically, factors considered important in cycling races, such as total score, win rate, alliance rate, and trifecta rate, were analyzed, as well as the gap between the 7 athletes in each race. This included the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) for total score, win rate, alliance rate, and trifecta rate, as well as the gaps in rankings (1st-2nd, 2nd-3rd, 3rd-4th, 4th-5th, 5th-6th, 6th-7th). [Results] Higher average overall scores (β= .38, p < .001) and smaller performance gaps among players within the same race were associated with increased sales. Considering that higher average overall scores generally lead to higher sales, and that there are three distinct race categories in cycle racing (General, Excellent, and Special), we conducted a regression analysis by race category. The empirical analysis showed that, while there were some specific differences across race classes, in general, the higher the average overall score and the smaller the difference in past performance between players in the same race, the higher the revenue. In addition, regression analysis by race level showed that the relationship between minimum odds per win and revenue also tended to increase as the minimum odds per win increased, and this was more evident at higher race levels. This indicates a possible positive relationship between the perceived competitiveness of the race and customers' expected returns. [Conclusion] This study is expected to serve as a significant reference for the establishment of management strategies to increase the value of the sports industry, as it suggests an organizational system that can increase the revenue of keirin racing, one of the sports betting events.
... However, in the subsequent subsections, we outline that the extent to which this occurs depends on the specific features characterizing the foreign language presence. Importantly, processing fluency is generally assumed to be positively valenced, resulting in more positive evaluations of fluently processed stimuli (Reber, Winkielman, & Schwarz 1998). The underlying process has been shown to follow feelings-as-information theory and has been referred to as the hedonic fluency model. ...
... When target information is easy to obtain and has high fluency, consumers will form a more positive attitude toward the target [50]. Stimuli with high processing fluency can provide information receivers with an experience that feels correct [51,52] and, simultaneously, trigger positive emotions, thereby increasing people's likeness to information processing objects [53]. When researchers manipulated participants' attributions of emotion to believe that the positive emotional experience was caused by other factors (e.g., background music) that had nothing to do with the object being judged, the influence of information processing fluency on judgment ceased to exist [54]. ...
Advertising has become an important strategy for many enterprises to nudge consumers to buy green products and achieve sustainable development. In the context of cultural diversity, the discussion on the influence of consumers’ cultural belief variables on the effectiveness of advertising persuasion appears conducive to promoting green consumption. Through two situational experiments based on information processing theory, this study verified the impact and mechanism of the interaction between self-construal and advertising appeals on green product purchase intention, revealing the mediating role of information processing fluency (Experiment 2). The results indicate that emotional (rational)-appeal advertisements can strengthen independent (interdependent) self-constructed consumers’ stronger purchase intentions for green products (Experiment 1). Moreover, the occurrence of this effect is mediated by information processing fluency (Experiment 2). Not only do the conclusions of this research enrich the literature in the field of self-construal and advertising appeal preference but they also have managerial implications for improving green marketing performance by using advertising appeal and targeting consumers’ cultural psychological characteristics.
... Research has indicated that processing fluency in simple writing is associated with several favorable attributes. Evaluations of truth, confidence, frequency, notoriety, and even liking are all improved by fluency (Reber & Schwarz, 1999;Norwick & Epley, 2003;Tversky & Kahneman, 1973;Jacoby et al., 1989;Reber et al., 1998). ...
The study aims to investigate the presence of affect heuristics in investment decisions and analyze the influence of company and financial tool names in investment decisions. The framework of the Affect Heuristic Model was adapted to measure perceived risk and perceived benefit. Besides the impact of fluency, association and familiar names were tested to discover the level of perceived risk and perceived benefit during the investment decision. The research was conducted among 150 investors who invest in the Nepal Stock Exchange through an online form. The study indicates that Nepalese investors tend to rely on heuristic shortcuts, such as fluency, familiarity, and association, when assessing investment opportunities. They are notably influenced by affect ‘name’ heuristics, shaping their perceptions of benefits. Moreover, their perception of risk and benefit is more influenced by trends and superficial factors like glitz than past performance and corporate character. Local companies and well-known brands are favored due to the familiarity heuristic.
... Individuals often experience fluctuations in fluency without truly identifying their source, so the increased fluency is misattributed to other salient attributes of the preferred stimulus, such as physical features (Butler & Berry, 2004;Nordhielm, 2003). Perceptual fluency is a special form of processing fluency that reflects the ease with which consumers recognize a target stimulus, involving processing the physical features in the visual or auditory modality (Reber et al., 1998;Lee & Labroo, 2004). It is worth noting that, like spoken words, phonotactic loops form before written words are encoded into the brain (Krishna et al., 2012). ...
Building trust is always seen as a firm’s long-term goal. Yet, little is known about creating a credible brand by taking brand name pronounceability design as the starting point. Diverse strategies of brand name pronounceability design widely exist in marketing practice; some are fairly easy to pronounce, while others are strange and mouthful (e.g., “Deloitte” versus “Ernst & Young”). Three main studies were conducted to explore the effect. Drawing on the perceptual fluency/misattribution (PF/M) model, the current research suggests that brand name pronounceability boosts misattribution to ad truthiness, leading to better evaluations of brand credibility. However, this influence does not extend to contexts when the brand name is subtly presented. This research (1) provides deep insight into the dimensions of brand name pronounceability, (2) refines the application perspectives of the PF/M model, and (3) critically supplements the research stream of brand name pronounceability aftereffects. Also, our findings provide practical guidance for marketers and brand managers.
... Jacoby & Dallas, 1981). Most of the older research had arrived to a consensus that there is a positive influence (Reber et al., 1998;Seamon et al., 1995). More recent research, however, explores further whether these effects in memory are strictly related to positive emotional judgment on the brands or if they can also imply negative judgements based on the main objective of a product (Lee & Labroo, 2004). ...
Since its introduction, television has been the main channel of investment for advertisements in order to influence customers purchase behavior. Many have attributed the mere exposure effect as the source of influence in purchase intention and purchase decision; however, most of the studies of television advertisement effects are not only outdated, but their sample size is questionable and their environments do not reflect reality. With the advent of the internet, social media and new information technologies, many recent studies focus on the effects of online advertisement, meanwhile, the investment in television advertisement still has not declined. In response to this, we applied machine learning algorithms SVM and XGBoost, as well as Logistic Regression, to construct a number of prediction models based on at-home advertisement exposure time and demographic data, examining the predictability of Actual Purchase and Purchase Intention behaviors of 3000 customers across 36 different products during the span of 3 months. If models based on exposure time had unreliable predictability in contrast to models based on demographic data, doubts would surface about the effectiveness of the hard investment in television advertising. Based on our results, we found that models based on advert exposure time were consistently low in their predictability in comparison with models based on demographic data only, and with models based on both demographic data and exposure time data. We also found that there was not a statistically significant difference between these last two kinds of models. This suggests that advert exposure time has little to no effect in the short-term in increasing positive actual purchase behavior.
... In addition to familiarity, related processes might contribute to the CV-preference effects, notably processing fluency. Both familiarity and preference have been frequently shown to be enhanced by processing fluency (e.g., Jacoby & Dallas, 1981;Reber et al., 1998;Whittlesea, 1993;Winkielman & Cacioppo, 2001). Moreover, increased processing fluency has been proposed as the mechanism for the influence of repetition and prototypicality on preference (Halberstadt & Rhodes, 2003;Winkielman et al., 2003). ...
Across languages, syllables more likely begin with consonants (vs. vowels) and end with vowels (vs. consonants), so that words that follow (vs. do not follow) this pattern are more familiar. In six experiments (total N = 638), we investigated the influence of beginning and ending letters (vowels vs. consonants) of pseudowords on preferences. Pseudowords that begin with consonants (vs. vowels) were preferred; independently, pseudowords that end with vowels (vs. consonants) were also preferred. Both of these consonant–vowel-preference effects generalized across stimulus sets and across speakers of German and English (Experiments 1a–1c). Additionally, consistent with familiarity as the underlying mechanism, pseudowords with consonant (vs. vowel) beginnings and vowel (vs. consonant) endings were more frequently judged to be real words (Experiment 2). The word-ending effect—but surprisingly, not the word-beginning effect—generalized to auditory stimulus presentation (Experiments 3a–3b). Thus, we find that preferences for vowel (vs. consonant) at word endings are more robust than preferences for consonant (vs. vowel) at word beginnings. By showing that consonant–vowel structure systematically influences preferences, we demonstrate two new associations between word form and affective meaning.
... The current study embraced fluency theory, which states that people prefer visual stimuli that they perceive as easy to process and understand [37], leading participants to pick the most preferred colour-shape pairs for themselves. Research studies have a consensus that there are non-random colour and shape associations, and both universal and cultural components constitute them. ...
Researchers have explored primary colour–geometric shape associations since Kandinsky’s correspondence theory. However, there is a gap in the literature regarding interior colour applications on surface shapes. To address this gap, an online study was employed to gather data with 100 participants who were asked to choose their preferred colours for shapes on bedroom walls with follow-up questions on the colour–shape semantic associations, their preference of colours and shapes on bedroom walls independently in addition to their favourite colour, their favourite shape, and colour–shape pairs without interior context. The results revealed that colour–shape preferences in interiors differ from those found in psychology studies, other colour applications on bedroom walls, and other preferences, indicating that colour preference is context-dependent. Interestingly, the most popular colour for surface shapes on bedroom walls is purple, followed by brown and blue. The study contributes to the existing literature by providing colour charts for bedroom applications for professionals in the industry, their clients/users, and future studies. The study presents a preliminary exploration of the topic. Further research could compare various demographic properties (such as gender, age, and culture), different colour attributes (including saturation and lightness), and complex geometric shapes.
... According to the study by Vinney and Vinney (2017), voice recognition in audio formats is a crucial factor in the positive evaluation of those voices, which we also know from other contexts. What the listener knows or recognizes is often evaluated positively or leaves a positive feeling simply because it is familiar and can be processed more fluently (the "fluency effect, " e.g., Reber et al., 1998). According to the results of the study by Vinney and Vinney (2017), the positive evaluation of characters' voices in audio formats can increase the PSI with the characters and the feeling of transportation among listeners. ...
Parasocial phenomena are among the most popular and best-researched topics in media reception and effects research. The research can now look back on a history of over 65 years and has experienced another significant boom in recent years. Between 2016 and 2020, more studies were published than in the entire previous 60 years. This descriptive review builds directly on the seminal review by Liebers and Schramm for the years 1956 to 2015 and is based on 281 English-and German-language studies published from 2016 to 2020. The following three research questions guided the review: How are the studies from 2016 to 2020 positioned in terms of the media contexts examined, the parasocial phenomena investigated, the methods and measurements used and the samples? (RQ1) What has changed in the studies from 2016 to 2020 compared to the studies from 1956 to 2015 in terms of the media contexts investigated, the parasocial phenomena studied, the methods and measurements used and the samples? (RQ2) What substantive perspectives and key insights can be gained from the studies conducted between 2016 and 2020 and what gaps in research can still be observed? (RQ3). The results show, for instance, that the largest proportion of studies from 2016 to 2020 focused on the area of social and new media, on non-fictional characters and amicable forms of parasocial relationships, using surveys and existing measurement instruments or adapted versions of them (RQ1). Compared to the studies from 1956 to 2015, parasocial phenomena are increasingly being researched experimentally, as mediating and moderating factors and using established scales, with a slight increase in the proportion of studies specifically investigating parasocial relationships or relationship breakups (RQ2). The research focus has evolved from film and television to social media and cross-media settings. Most empirical studies of parasocial phenomena still rely on young and predominantly female samples (RQ2). The neglect of negatively valenced parasocial phenomena, comparative cultural perspectives, comparative media perspectives, long-term effects and less educated and older people as samples can still be identified as major research gaps (RQ3) and opens up numerous opportunities for future research.
... Flow theory is an account of how skilled, fluid performances in many domains of life are associated with positive emotions (Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi, 1993). Simple environmental manipulations such as increasing stimulus clarity and contrast lead to positive emotional consequences (Reber et al., 1998). In phase one of a study, Liu et al. (2024) had actors produce facial expressions in response to emotionally evocative pictures. ...
An important aspect of any social interaction involves inferring other people’s mental states, intentions, and their likely next actions, by way of facial expression, body posture, eye gaze, and limb movements. An actor’s production of actions during social interactions and the observer’s perception of these actions are thus closely linked. In this review, we outline an action-observation methodology, which not only allows for separate analyses of production and perception, but also promotes the study of the dynamic interaction between these two sides of every social exchange. We review two lines of research that have benefited from its application. The first line focuses on individuals performing tasks alone and the observation of their actions by other individuals in order to make inferences about their attentional states. The second line of study focused on pairs of individuals performing collaborative tasks in naturalistic settings and the observation of these performances by other individuals. We offer several suggestions for how this methodology can be extended to improve on the limitations of the present studies, as well as some suggestions of how to use this methodology to venture into new territory. Our aim is to inspire future research applications of this methodology in order to advance our understanding of social action production and perception.
... Since we defined our Mondrians along an isosaturated circle in the MacLeod-Boynton [29] chromaticity diagram, Mondrians along the blue-yellow axis would appear to be of lower chromatic contrast than those along the orthogonal green-magenta axis (due to the relatively poorer colour sensitivity along the blue-yellow axis we observe in colour discrimination ellipses). Under the perceptual fluency hypothesis [41], people may experience lower contrast patterns as more visually comfortable than higher contrast patterns if they are encoded more efficiently by the visual system. Low visual discomfort may lead to high aesthetic preferences [7], or alternatively to low aesthetic preferences if people prefer images they find more challenging. ...
To what extent is perception shaped by low-level statistical regularities of our visual environments and on what time scales? We characterized the chromatic ‘visual diets’ of people living in remote rainforest and urban environments, using calibrated head-mounted cameras worn by participants as they went about their daily lives. All environments had chromatic distributions with the most variance along a blue–yellow axis, but the extent of this bias differed across locations. If colour perception is calibrated to the visual environments in which participants are immersed, variation in the extent of the bias in scene statistics should have a corresponding impact on perceptual judgements. To test this, we measured colour discrimination and preferences for distributions of colour for people living in different environments. Group differences in the extent of blue–yellow bias in colour discrimination were consistent with perceptual learning in local environments. Preferences for colour distributions aligned with scene statistics, but not specifically to local environments, and one group preferred distributions along an unnatural colour axis orthogonal to that dominant in natural scenes. Our study shows the benefits of conducting psychophysics with people at remote locations for understanding the commonalities and diversity in human perception.
... One relevant concept is cognitive fluency, which refers to the ease with which readers can process information. More cognitively fluent content is associated with more positive affective judgments (e.g., perceptions of trust, likeability, credibility) [48] and greater comprehension [49]. Forensic expert opinion evidence is notoriously laden with scientific jargon [50]. ...
Forensic scientific practitioners and researchers must navigate a rapidly growing body of research. This makes it increasingly challenging to inform courts, lawyers, and other decision makers about the state of the field, thus heightening the chances of wrongful convictions and acquittals. When similar challenges have arisen in other fields, they have turned to systematic reviews, which are research reviews that use formal, articulated methods to provide a comprehensive summary of the literature on a specific research question. Systematic reviews allow users to evaluate how the authors identified research and synthesised its findings, making them more transparent than informal literature reviews. This article lays out a justification and plan for systematic reviews in forensic science.
... Our findings show that the research on auditory stimuli has focused on perceptual fluency or a general form of processing fluency, while omitting conceptual fluency. The prevalence of perceptual fluency in the research on auditory stimuli was to be expected, given that its effect on affective judgements is well researched for visual stimuli such as drawings and shapes (Reber et al., 1998) or words (Van den Bergh & Vrana, 1998). What is surprising however is the lack of consideration for conceptual fluency, given that in some instances it is as prevalent as perceptual fluency (Gamblin, 2020, Chapter 2). ...
Processing fluency has been shown to affect how people aesthetically evaluate stimuli. While this effect is well documented for visual stimuli, the evidence accumulated for auditory stimuli has not yet been integrated. Our aim was to examine the relevant research on how processing fluency affects the aesthetic appreciation of auditory stimuli and to identify the extant knowledge gaps in this body of evidence. This scoping review of 19 studies reported across 13 articles found that, similarly to visual stimuli, fluency has a positive effect on liking of auditory stimuli. Additionally, we identified certain elements that impede the generalizability of the current research on the relationship between fluency and aesthetic reactions to auditory stimuli, such as a lack of consistency in the number of repeated exposures, the tendency to omit the affective component and the failure to account for personal variables such as musical abilities developed through musical training or the participants' personality or preferences. These results offer a starting point in developing novel and proper processing fluency manipulations of auditory stimuli and suggest several avenues for future research aiming to clarify the impact and importance of processing fluency and disfluency in this domain.
The interaction between consumers and multi-content posts on Instagram, despite their widespread use as marketing tools, remains underexplored in academic research and marketing practices. The current research addresses this gap by employing construal-level theory and the concept of psychological distance to investigate how the order of content displays and individuals’ expectations of change influence consumer behavioral intentions. This study hypothesizes that presenting feasibility-focused content before desirability-focused content, aligning with the natural processing sequences of individuals, elicits more favorable responses than the reverse order. Results additionally reveal that individuals’ expectations of change significantly moderate their responses to content order. Specifically, those with lower expectations of change showed stronger positive responses to an initial presentation of feasibility-focused content, whereas those with higher expectations exhibited no difference in their responses regardless of the order. Furthermore, perceived psychological distance while processing the advertised multi-content post serves as a critical mediating factor, shedding light on the underlying mechanisms. This study provides valuable theoretical and practical insights, suggesting strategies for optimizing content arrangement in Instagram-based marketing communications.
Purpose
Service costs are often presented as estimates rather than exact costs. This research presents an interesting new framing effect associated with the framing of service cost estimates. Specifically, the authors hypothesize and provide evidence for the upper-limit framing effect: framing the upper limit of a cost estimate as “less than X” (vs “no more than X”) results in different expectations of the underlying costs.
Design/methodology/approach
A series of eight studies, involving everyday consumption contexts, diverse populations and incentive compatible and hypothetical scenario-based designs, were conducted to test the underlying hypotheses.
Findings
A series of eight studies demonstrate that when estimates are small, less than (vs no more than) framing results in contracted cost perceptions, and that the reverse emerges in the context of large cost estimates. Furthermore, these effects are driven by processing fluency, and systematically influence downstream consumption choices.
Research limitations/implications
Future research can further examine our effects manipulating “small” versus “large” not by the magnitude of the cost, but by the type of individual or consumption context. In addition, future research could test how specific individual differences moderate the effects.
Practical implications
This research presents substantial managerial implications. Given that marketers interchangeably use less than and no more than framing to express the upper limit of a service cost estimate, this study provides an important insight that the framing of the upper limit can influence perception of the underlying service cost, and that the nature of the effect depends on the size of the estimate.
Social implications
This research suggests implications for communicating public policy as it provides insights to regulators and policymakers regarding how to frame communication involving federally mandated guidelines. For example, when communicating outcomes, public policymakers should consider the magnitude of the outcome when determining how to frame the message.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is perhaps the first to study the influence of cost framing on perception of service cost estimates. In addition, this research makes substantial contributions to the literatures on negation, framing and consumer cost perception.
Anti‐transgender bias is an important area of research given the disproportionate negative outcomes transgender relative to cisgender individuals experience. Yet, the mechanisms underlying this disproportionate negative bias remain understudied. We posit that a person perception perspective could be particularly beneficial to characterize mechanisms for this negative bias experienced by transgender individuals. We hypothesize that slower or more effortful processing when processing the gender of transgender versus cisgender individuals contributes to discrimination against transgender individuals (e.g., misgendering and degendering). We introduce and discuss two forms of potentially disfluent gender processing, conceptual and perceptual, and explore their potential connections to these biases. We also suggest how the existing literature on person perception can guide future research on the mechanisms driving anti‐transgender bias and, consequently, potentially inform interventions to reduce bias against the transgender community.
Face preferences and facial attractiveness influence broad and varied aspects of social behavior, including partner choices, hiring decisions, and voting behavior. Past research has identified several visual parameters that influence the attractiveness of faces. This chapter outlines prominent theories of attraction: the perceptual bias account (which proposes that attractiveness judgments are a functionless by-product of the visual recognition system) and the evolutionary advantage account (which proposes that attractiveness judgments are psychological adaptations that identify high quality potential mates). Next, this chapter summarizes the literature surrounding the relationship between expression, self-resemblance, apparent health, youthfulness, averageness, symmetry, and sexual dimorphism (i.e., masculinity and femininity) and perceived attractiveness. In line with the evolutionary advantage view, the literature supports the proposal that facial attractiveness is a potentially adaptive indicator of mate quality in men and women. This chapter concludes with discussion on the relevance of this work to transgender and gender diverse people seeking gender-affirming surgeries and emphasizes the need for additional research using gender and sexual minority participants.
The mere exposure effect refers to the phenomenon in which repeated, unreinforced exposure to a stimulus is sufficient to increase an individual's liking for it. Moreover, numerous experiments have demonstrated that this effect can occur outside of conscious awareness. This article reviews empirical findings highlighting the cognitive factors that enhance the effect, including familiarity, novelty, and consistency of action. The review suggests that the mere exposure effect is closely linked to the social fluency associated with an exposed object. Finally, emerging themes and future directions for research on the mere exposure effect are discussed.
This chapter defines the concept of aesthetics and its influence on consumer behavior, emphasizing its impact on visual appeal and the evaluation of visual stimuli. It discusses aesthetic psychology and the dimensions of aesthetic experience, highlighting the roles of psychographic and collative variables in appreciating visual stimuli. The chapter delves into the fluency process as a key mechanism that explains the relationships between visual dimensions and aesthetic appreciation. Additionally, it examines how aesthetic dimensions and fluency affect consumer perceptions across various marketing domains, including eco-labels, showcasing their importance in shaping consumer attitudes and decision-making processes.
The target article argued that motivation constructs are treated as black boxes and called for work that specifies the mental computational processes underlying motivated behavior. In response to critical commentaries, we clarify our philosophical standpoint, elaborate on the meaning of mental computational processes and why past work was not sufficient, and discuss the opportunities to expand the scope of the framework.
People tend to show greater liking for expressions of sadness when these expressions are described as art. Why does this effect arise? One obvious hypothesis would be that describing something as art makes people more likely to regard it as fictional , and people prefer expressions of sadness that are not real. We contrast this obvious hypothesis with a hypothesis derived from the philosophical literature. In this alternative hypothesis, describing something as art makes people more inclined to appropriate it, that is, to see it as an expression of their own sadness. Study 1 found that describing the exact same sad text as art (e.g., a monologue) as opposed to not‐art (e.g., a diary entry) led to increased liking for the work. Study 2 showed that this effect is not mediated by fictionality. Study 3 showed that the effect is mediated by appropriation. Study 4 looked at the impact of a manipulation of fictionality. Describing a work as fictional did lead to increased liking, but this effect was completely mediated by appropriation. These results provide at least some initial support for the appropriation hypothesis.
Purpose
Health short videos are serving as a powerful tool for encouraging individuals to actively adopt healthier behaviors. The sensory cues applied in these videos can be useful for engaging peripheral processing and enhancing attitudes. While previous research has examined the effects of various single cues, this study features a pioneering attempt to explore the roles of audiovisual cross-modal correspondence, encompassing multisensory cues perceived through different modalities, in health communication.
Design/methodology/approach
A 2 (color: warm/cool) × 2 (music tempo: fast/slow) between-subjects experiment was conducted to observe 120 participants’ responses to a health short video promoting eye health that was created using four different combinations of background color and background music tempo.
Findings
It was found that the congruent color–tempo pairings, that is blue & slow and orange & fast, led to more positive attitudes toward the videos than the incongruent pairings, that is blue & fast and orange & slow. The effect of cross-modal correspondence on attitude was fully mediated by processing fluency, with gender acting as a moderator between the two variables. Furthermore, individuals’ attitudes toward a short video positively influenced their health behavioral intentions.
Originality/value
These findings not only lend support to the theoretical framework of “multisensory cues-fluency-attitude-intention” chain for persuasion purposes but also have practical implications for creating effective health short videos.
The emergence of dynamic digital arts, such as dynamic generative art, has reshaped how aesthetic experiences can be studied, emphasizing their inherently dynamic and evolving nature. Within the framework of computational aesthetics, which seeks to model and quantify human perceptions of beauty, this study extends the focus from static to dynamic stimuli. We investigate the temporal relationship between evolving image features and aesthetic judgments, exploring how dynamic visual properties influence the progression of aesthetic judgments over time. By introducing temporal offsets in the analysis and employing linear and nonlinear statistical models, we examine continuous aesthetic ratings alongside an extensive set of image features. Our findings offer a novel perspective on the enduring impact of image features on aesthetic experience.
Synopsis
The research problem
We investigated the relationship between product market competition and the textual characteristics of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures. Specifically, we investigated three textual characteristics: tone of optimism, tone of tangibility (matter-of-factness), and readability.
Motivation or theoretical reasoning
On the one hand, the three ways in which CSR disclosure can enhance corporate success in competitive product market situations are as follows: (1) More readable disclosures with more optimistic and matter-of-fact tones help firms attract new customers while enhancing customer loyalty and brand value. (2) Increased market competition is expected to encourage firms to provide more-readable CSR disclosures with optimistic and matter-of-fact tones to enhance their access to external financing at lower costs. (3) CSR disclosure may strengthen a firm’s connections with business stakeholders (e.g., employees and suppliers). These connections are conducive to corporate success in competitive product market situations. On the other hand, it is well established that firms find CSR disclosure to be costly.
The test hypotheses
A significant relationship exists between product market competition and the three textual characteristics of CSR disclosures, namely, tone of optimism, tone of tangibility (matter-of-factness), and readability.
Target population
Our sample comprised 2,018 firm-year observations (2002–2020) of listed firms in Australia.
Findings
Our study found that firms facing an increase in product market competition tend to publish less-readable CSR disclosures with less use of optimism and matter-of-fact tones of language, and vice versa. In practical terms, this indicates that firms fail to leverage CSR disclosure in managing their product market competition, even though CSR disclosure is recognized as an effective marketing and brand strategy. Therefore, our study examined whether or not the CSR committee, as a key sustainability governance mechanism on CSR disclosure, could contribute to mitigating this missed opportunity. We found that the negative relationship between the two variables is attenuated by the presence of a CSR committee and by the CSR committee’s effectiveness. Our study should be of interest to firms, users of CSR disclosures, and regulators.
Social media has proven to be a potent tool to disseminate information in a faster and more efficient way. Where the transfer of knowledge occurs, mindset induction will follow. Social media has the inductive ability to influence the mind. This ability can be beneficial if the cause is good, however, if the cause is the opposite, detrimental effects will occur. Subsequently, not all information on social media is applicable to everyone. This is where the problems come, specifically the ideology and set of ideas that are against religious teaching. On account of this, this paper aims to explore the influence of these ideologies on the mind of social media user in the context of their Islamic faith. To achieve this objective, a qualitative method was employed, using a semi-structured interview with social media users in Brunei. The data was analysed using a thematic analysis, and the result showed that there is a strong association between the ability to control the influence of social media misuse on the mind and the religious devotion of the user. The more devoted a person is, the more likely they are to protect themselves from the negative influence of social media misuse. This is significant in exploring the negative influence of social media. As well as, assist in providing relevant parties with a wider understanding of the religiously devoted individual. Future research may explore more of this field of study, especially on the quantitative side of the research.
Considerable research suggests making information simpler is better. Simplification improves the efficiency of information extraction and lowers psychological frictions, leading to its popularity with policymakers and practitioners worldwide. However, it remains unclear when and how simplification can be utilized most effectively, or if there are contexts where simplification may produce unintended maleficent effects. Using two large-scale field experiments (N = 126,673), we test whether simplifying account statements helps encourage retirement savings in Mexico. We partner with two retirement firms, one ranked high in rate of returns and the other ranked lower. We find that simplifying retirement account statements improves contribution rates for consumers in the high-ranking firm but reduces contribution rates for consumers in the low-ranking firm. Five follow-up experiments provide evidence consistent with a fluency amplification account. Simplifying information improves processing fluency making it easier to accurately recall firm rank relative to the control, which amplifies behavior bidirectionally: High-ranking (low-ranking) firm consumers more accurately recall their firm’s rank, subsequently increasing (decreasing) contributions. However, if simplification is harnessed in ways that improve processing fluency and lower perceived switching costs, then simplification can improve retirement savings for everyone either by boosting contributions or encouraging people to switch to higher performing alternatives.
Processing fluency, which describes the subjective sensation of ease with which information is processed by the sensory systems and the brain, has become one of the most popular explanations of aesthetic appreciation and beauty. Two metrics have recently been proposed to model fluency: the sparsity of neuronal activation, which describes the concentration of activity in a subset of neurons, and the statistical typicality of activations, which describes how well the encoding of a stimulus matches a reference representation of stimuli of the category to which it belongs. Using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) as a model for the human visual system, this study compares the ability of these metrics to explain variation in facial attractiveness. Our findings show that the sparsity of neuronal activations is a more robust predictor of facial attractiveness than statistical typicality. Refining the reference representation to a single ethnicity or gender does not increase the explanatory power of statistical typicality. However, statistical typicality and sparsity predict facial beauty based on different layers of the CNNs, suggesting that they describe different neural mechanisms underlying fluency.
Subjective fluency affects preference evaluation in daily objects through two routes: increasing preference (‘hedonic effect’) and amplifying valence effects on preference (‘amplifying effect’). Contrarily, empirical aesthetics suggest that contextual knowledge, the primary source of fluency, prevents valence-dependent appreciation, challenging the amplifying effect model. Here, we examined the dual effects of fluency on preference for visual artworks with varying valence. We found that fluency increased preference and weakened valence effects. Using an eye-tracking approach, we also investigated the cognitive mechanism bridging fluency and preference. We hypothesized that contextual information facilitates controlled processing-related eye movement, and this gazing behavior enhances fluency and preference. While contextual information facilitated controlled processing and fluency, controlled eye movement did not mediate its effect on fluency. Although our findings motivate further research into the complex interplay between processing style and fluency, they elucidate art-specific affect-fluency-preference interactions.
Presents a standardized set of 260 pictures for use in experiments investigating differences and similarities in the processing of pictures and words. The pictures are black-and-white line drawings executed according to a set of rules that provide consistency of pictorial representation. They have been standardized on 4 variables of central relevance to memory and cognitive processing: name agreement, image agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity. The intercorrelations among the 4 measures were low, suggesting that they are indices of different attributes of the pictures. The concepts were selected to provide exemplars from several widely studied semantic categories. Sources of naming variance, and mean familiarity and complexity of the exemplars, differed significantly across the set of categories investigated. The potential significance of each of the normative variables to a number of semantic and episodic memory tasks is discussed. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
The duration of a brief visual display, the rate of response, and the nature of the material displayed were varied. The visual image, conceived as a sensory representation of the retinal image following stimulation, persists for 1 to 2 seconds, and the amount that can be identified depends on the rate at which digits, letters, or colors are recognized. Above the critical level, the duration of the visual image is constant over a range of display durations and lighting conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A review and meta-analysis of methodological and subject variables influencing the exposure–affect relationship was performed on studies of the mere exposure effect published in the 20 years following R. B. Zajonc's (see record
1968-12019-001) seminal monograph. Stimulus type, stimulus complexity, presentation sequence, exposure duration, stimulus recognition, age of subject, delay between exposure and ratings, and maximum number of stimulus presentations all influence the magnitude of the exposure effect. Implications of these findings are discussed in the context of previous reviews of the literature on exposure effects and with respect to prevailing theoretical models of the exposure–affect relationship. Modifications of the 2-factor model of exposure effects that increase the heuristic value of the model are described. A possible evolutionary basis of the exposure effect is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The repeated exposure of unmasked irregular geometric shapes for very brief durations (1 or 2 ms) has been shown to generate preferences as well as judgments of familiarity for the previously exposed shapes. At the same time these stimuli are not recognized as having been presented. Such exposure also leads to judgments of brightness and darkness independent of stimulus intensity, and it is dependent on the use of unmasked stimuli. This effect is nonspecific, in contrast to stimulus-specific effects with masked stimuli, and it is not restricted to affective judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Feelings of familiarity are not direct products of memory. Although prior experience of a stimulus can produce a feeling of familiarity, that feeling can also be aroused in the absence of prior experience if perceptual processing of the stimulus is fluent (e.g., B. W. Whittlesea et al, 1990). This suggests that feelings of familiarity arise through an unconscious inference about the source of processing fluency. The present experiments extend that conclusion. First, they show that a wide variety of feelings about the past are controlled by a fluency heuristic, including feelings about the meaning, pleasantness, duration, and recency of past events. Second, they demonstrate that the attribution process does not rely only on perceptual fluency, but can be influenced even more by the fluency of conceptual processing. Third, they show that although the fluency heuristic itself is simple, people's use of it is highly sophisticated and makes them robustly sensitive to the actual historical status of current events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
PsyScope is an integrated environment for designing and running psychology experiments on Macintosh computers. The primary
goal of PsyScope is to give both psychology students and trained researchers a tool that allows them to design experiments
without the need for programming. PsyScope relies on the interactive graphic environment provided by Macintosh computers to
accomplish this goal. The standard components of a psychology experiment—groups, blocks, trials, and factors—are all represented
graphically, and experiments are constructed by working with these elements in interactive windows and dialogs. In this article,
we describe the overall organization of the program, provide an example of how a simple experiment can be constructed within
its graphic environment, and discuss some of its technical features (such as its underlying scripting language, timing characteristics,
etc.). PsyScope is available for noncommercial purposes free of charge and unsupported to the general research community.
Information about how to obtain the program and its documentation is provided.
HYPOTHESIZES THAT MERE REPEATED EXPOSURE OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO A STIMULUS OBJECT ENHANCES HIS ATTITUDE TOWARD IT. BY "MERE" EXPOSURE IS MEANT A CONDITION MAKING THE STIMULUS ACCESSIBLE TO PERCEPTION. SUPPORT FOR THE HYPOTHESIS CONSISTS OF 4 TYPES OF EVIDENCE, PRESENTED AND REVIEWED: (1) THE CORRELATION BETWEEN AFFECTIVE CONNOTATION OF WORDS AND WORD FREQUENCY, (2) THE EFFECT OF EXPERIMENTALLY MANIPULATED FREQUENCY OF EXPOSURE UPON THE AFFECTIVE CONNOTATION OF NONSENSE WORDS AND SYMBOLS, (3) THE CORRELATION BETWEEN WORD FREQUENCY AND THE ATTITUDE TO THEIR REFERENTS, AND (4) THE EFFECTS OF EXPERIMENTALLY MANIPULATED FREQUENCY OF EXPOSURE ON ATTITUDE. THE RELEVANCE FOR THE EXPOSURE-ATTITUDE HYPOTHESIS OF THE EXPLORATION THEORY AND OF THE SEMANTIC SATIATION FINDINGS WERE EXAMINED. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Evaluated the effects of 4 factor variations (pattern goodness of test stimuli and memory set items, discriminability of test stimuli, and similarity of test stimuli) on mean reaction time (RT) in a memory search task. 12 unpaid volunteer undergraduates served as Ss (7 right-handed and 5 left-handed). Results show that (a) the joint effect of pattern goodness and stimulus discriminability was additive; (b) a Pattern Goodness * Memory Load interaction affected RT; and (c) a significant Pattern Goodness * Similarity interaction also occurred. Findings are interpreted as evidence that (a) the time to form an internal representation of test stimuli is not influenced by pattern goodness; (b) the time to generate a visual representation of memory set items is influenced by goodness of these items; and (c) pattern goodness influences the time to compare test stimuli with memory set items.
Previous research has found that repeated exposure to briefly presented visual stimuli can increase the positive affect for the stimuli without enhancing their recognition. Subjects could discriminate target and distractor shapes by affective preference in the absence of recognition memory. This study examined this phenomenon as a function of stimulus exposure duration. Over exposure durations of 0, 2, 8, 12, 24, and 48 ms, the functions for affect and recognition judgments exhibited different temporal dynamics. Target selection by affect was possible at very brief exposures and was influenced little by increasing durations; target selection by recognition required longer stimulus exposures and improved with increasing durations. Affective discrimination of stimuli that are not recognized is a reliable phenomenon, but it occurs only within a narrow band of time. This parametric study has specified the relationship between exposure duration and affect and recognition judgments and has located that temporal window.
Experiments were designed to produce illusions of immediate memory and of perception, in order to demonstrate that subjective experience of familiarity and perceptual quality may rely on an unconscious attribution process. Subjects saw a short and rapidly presented list of words, then pronounced and judged a target word. We influenced the fluency of pronouncing the target through independent manipulation of repetition and visual clarity. Judgments of repetition were influenced by clarity (Experiments 1 and 2), but not when subjects knew that clarity was manipulated (Experiment 3). Conversely, judgments of clarity were influenced by repetition (Experiment 4). We interpret these symmetric illusions to mean that fluent performance is unconsciously attributed to whatever source is apparent and that feelings of familiarity and perceptual quality result when fluency is attributed respectively to past experience or current circumstances.
A review and meta-analysis of methodological and subject variables influencing the exposure-affect relationship was performed on studies of the mere exposure effect published in the 20 years following Zajonc's (1968) seminal monograph. Stimulus type, stimulus complexity, presentation sequence, exposure duration, stimulus recognition, age of subject, delay between exposure and ratings, and maximum number of stimulus presentations all influence the magnitude of the exposure effect. Implications of these findings are discussed in the context of previous reviews of the literature on exposure effects and with respect to prevailing theoretical models of the exposure-affect relationship. Modifications of the 2-factor model of exposure effects that increase the heuristic value of the model are described. A possible evolutionary basis of the exposure effect is discussed.
Subjects read aloud words presented once at the rate of one per second. A perceptual identification task, involving 30- or
50-msec presentations, followed. Some of the words presented for identification had been read previously; others were new.
After each presentation, in addition to identifying the word, the subjects judged its duration. The data indicate that a single
presentation of a word affects its later perception, as revealed by enhanced perceptual identification, longer duration judgments,
and better temporal discrimination. A second experiment showed that a single presentation influenced duration judgments even
when identification was not required. The final experiment addressed the issue of what is preserved in memory from a prior
presentation. The results from the three experiments indicate that duration judgments provide a valuable dependent measure
of memory in the perceptual identification task and support the misattribution hypothesis: A prior presentation enhances perceptual
identification, and this increase in relative perceptual fluency is incorrectly attributed to a longer presentation duration.
Animal and human subjects readily develop strong preferences for objects that have become familiar through repeated exposures. Experimental evidence is presented that these preferences can develop even when the exposures are so degraded that recognition is precluded.
In this article we present a standardized set of 260 pictures for use in experiments investigating differences and similarities in the processing of pictures and words. The pictures are black-and-white line drawings executed according to a set of rules that provide consistency of pictorial representation. The pictures have been standardized on four variables of central relevance to memory and cognitive processing: name agreement, image agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity. The intercorrelations among the four measures were low, suggesting that they are indices of different attributes of the pictures. The concepts were selected to provide exemplars from several widely studied semantic categories. Sources of naming variance, and mean familiarity and complexity of the exemplars, differed significantly across the set of categories investigated. The potential significance of each of the normative variables to a number of semantic and episodic memory tasks is discussed.
Memory attributions Varieties of memory and consciousness: Essays in honour of Endel Tulving Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Affective discrimination of stimuli that can-not be recognized
- L L Jacoby
- C M Kelley
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Jacoby, L.L., Kelley, C.M., & Dywan, J. (1989). Memory attributions. In H.L. Roediger, III, & F.I.M. Craik (Eds.), Varieties of memory and consciousness: Essays in honour of Endel Tulving (pp. 391–422). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Kunst-Wilson, W.R., & Zajonc, R.B. (1980). Affective discrimination of stimuli that can-not be recognized. Science, 207, 557–558.
Acknowledgments— This research was supported by the Swiss National Foundation (Fellowship No. 8210-040219 to Rolf Reber) We thank Rick Chalela and Elizabeth Wooley for their help in collecting data and Marek Drogosz Zajonc for valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article
- R Evision
R EVISION ACCEPTED 8/4/97) Acknowledgments— This research was supported by the Swiss National Foundation (Fellowship No. 8210-040219 to Rolf Reber). We thank Rick Chalela and Elizabeth Wooley for their help in collecting data and Marek Drogosz, Bärbel Knäuper, Yoshio Nakamura, Andrzej Nowak, and Robert B. Zajonc for valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article. at Univ. of Tasmania Library on October 13, 2014 pss.sagepub.com Downloaded from
Attraction, affiliation, and attachment
- R B Zajonc
Zajonc, R.B. (1971). Attraction, affiliation, and attachment. In J.E. Eisenberg & W.S. Dillon (Eds.), Man and beast: Comparative social behavior (pp. 141-179). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.