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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 13, 2026

Olfactory Context Dependent Memory: Direct Presentation of Odorants

Olfactory Context Dependent Memory: Direct Presentation of Odorants

Published on: September 18, 2018

Eliminating the mere exposure effect through changes in context between exposure and test.

Daniel de Zilva¹, Chris J Mitchell, Ben R Newell

¹a School of Psychology , University of New South Wales , Sydney , NSW , Australia.

Cognition & Emotion

|March 20, 2013

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

The mere exposure effect, where familiarity breeds liking, is context-dependent. Changing the exposure context disrupts this preference for familiar stimuli.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Social Psychology

Background:

The mere exposure effect describes how familiarity with stimuli increases liking.
Previous research suggests this effect is robust, but its contextual dependency is less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether the mere exposure effect is contingent on consistent contextual cues during both exposure and testing phases.
To determine if changes in context between learning and retrieval impact stimulus preference.

Main Methods:

Participants were exposed to cue-target pairs (nonsense words and images).
Familiarity and pleasantness of target stimuli were rated in a test phase.
Contextual manipulations included rearranging cue-target pairings and introducing novel cues.

Main Results:

A significant mere exposure effect was observed, with familiar targets preferred over novel ones.
This preference was significantly reduced when cue-target pairings were altered between exposure and test.
Introducing a novel cue at test also disrupted the mere exposure effect.

Conclusions:

The mere exposure effect is sensitive to contextual changes between exposure and test.
Contextual specificity plays a crucial role in modulating the familiarity-liking relationship.
Familiarity-based preferences are not generalized across different or altered contexts.