Mere-Exposure Effect (Zajonc, 1968)

Repeated exposure to a stimulus increases liking for it — with no argument, no reward, and even when the exposures are subliminal and never consciously recognized. The effect is strongest for initially neutral or novel stimuli, and it saturates: past a point, over-exposure breeds satiation and the curve reverses.

Transfer. Preference is built by frequency before it is built by any single persuasive piece. For a creator this is the mechanism under being-seen-reliably: consistent, repeated presence in a reader's feed accrues affinity that no one-off post can buy, so the compounding asset is showing up, not any given hit. Two edges follow. Familiarity is doing quiet work your best argument gets credit for — a claim from a face seen fifty times lands softer than the identical claim from a stranger. And saturation is real: the same format, hook, or thumbnail repeated past satiation flips from warm to grating, which is why the durable pattern is a recognizable frame carrying fresh contents — constant enough to accumulate exposure, varied enough to dodge the reversal.

Kin: von-restorff-effect · processing-fluency · being-seen-reliably · models · growth-stages