Even though EC paradigms inevitably expose participants repeatedly to stimuli in a manner very similar to mere exposure paradigms, the hedonically positive experience of processing fluency that is considered the underlying mechanism of the mere exposure effect has received little attention in EC research. In this presentation, I will present empirical evidence from seven experimental studies (two published and five unpublished) attesting to the critical role fluency has in understanding EC. The first study (Landwehr et al., 2017) shows that exposure-induced fluency asymmetrically biases EC in that positive EC is augmented and negative EC attenuated. A set of three unpublished studies extends this finding to extinction of EC based on the premise that extinction is procedurally identical to a fluency-inducing mere exposure procedure. These studies show that repeated measurement of fluency and liking trigger asymmetric extinction of negative EC but not of positive EC—in line with a systematic extinction bias due to fluency. Finally, when actively manipulating the perceptual fluency of the conditioned stimuli utilizing color contrast, EC effects for fluent conditioned stimuli are systematically uplifted and the valence effect of the unconditioned stimuli is amplified (Landwehr & Eckmann, 2020; replicated in two further unpublished studies).

References

Landwehr, J. R. & Eckmann, L. (2020). The nature of processing fluency: Amplification versus hedonic marking. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 90, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2020.103997

Landwehr, J. R., Golla, B., & Reber, R. (2017). Processing fluency: An inevitable side effect of evaluative conditioning. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 70, 124-128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.01.004