Mental Imagery and the Mere Exposure Effect

仅仅是暴露效应--反复接触刺激后，人们对刺激的喜好增加--是社会心理学中最成熟的现象之一。单纯的暴露效应在现实世界中有许多应用，可以增强对不熟悉的民族和种族群体成员的态度，减少对令人恐惧的刺激(例如蜘蛛、蛇)的负面反应，并帮助在各种情况和背景下塑造审美偏好和食物偏好。尽管单纯的暴露效应的存在已经得到了很好的证实，但这种效应背后的过程仍然难以捉摸。考虑到暴露效应可以在刺激暴露后的较长时间内(有时是几周或更长时间)持续不减，那么仅仅暴露效应的一个关键组成部分可能是在脑海中形成一个仅仅暴露的刺激的图像，该图像被编码在长期记忆中，并在以后的日期被检索到。这项研究的目标是通过研究心理意象在形成对仅仅暴露的视觉刺激的反应中的作用，来探索暴露效应背后的心理和神经过程。实验旨在确定操纵仅仅暴露的刺激(例如，物体、动物、人的照片)的心理图像的各种特征是否会以有意义的方式改变效果。不同的实验组测试了假设：(1)已被证明改变心理意象判断的潜伏期的操作会在仅暴露的刺激的喜欢评级的潜伏期产生平行的变化；以及(2)功能磁共振成像(FMRI)评估的皮质激活模式在对仅暴露的刺激的评估评级期间产生的模式与心理意象框架预测的那些一致。通过描绘暴露效应背后的过程，这项研究计划将为继续应用暴露方法和发现来解决现实世界的问题和问题，如恐惧的获得和减少，态度的形成和改变，以及刻板印象和偏见的减少奠定基础。

The mere exposure effect -- increased liking for a stimulus following repeated exposure to that stimulus -- is one of the most well-established phenomena in social psychology. Mere exposure effects have numerous real-world applications, enhancing attitudes regarding members of unfamiliar ethnic and racial groups, diminishing negative reactions to feared stimuli (for example, spiders, snakes), and helping shape both aesthetic preferences and food preferences in a variety of situations and contexts. Although the existence of the mere exposure effect is well-established, the processes underlying the effect remain elusive. Given that exposure effects can persist undiminished for extended periods (sometimes several weeks or longer) following stimulus exposures, a key component of the mere exposure effect may be the formation of a mental image of the merely exposed stimulus which is encoded in long-term memory and retrieved at a later date. The objectives of this program of research are to explore the psychological and neurological processes that underlie the exposure effect by examining the role of mental imagery in shaping responses to merely exposed visual stimuli. Experiments are designed to determine whether manipulating various features of mental images of merely exposed stimuli (for example, objects, animals, photographs of people) alter the effect in meaningful ways. Separate sets of experiments test the hypotheses that (1) manipulations that have been shown to alter the latency of mental imagery judgments produce parallel changes in the latency of liking ratings of merely exposed stimuli; and (2) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) assessed cortical activation patterns produced during evaluative ratings of merely-exposed stimuli are consistent with those predicted by the mental imagery framework. By delineating the processes that underlie the mere exposure effect this program of research will set the stage for continued application of mere exposure methods and findings to real-world problems and issues such as fear acquisition and reduction, attitude formation and change, and stereotype- and prejudice-reduction.