Mere Exposure Effect Definition The mere exposure effect describes the phenomenon that simply encountering a stimulus repeatedly somehow makes one like it more. Perhaps the stimulus is a painting on the wall, a melody on a radio, or a face of a person you pass by every day—somehow all these stimuli tend to “grow on
Sleeper Effect Definition A sleeper effect in persuasion is a delayed increase in the impact of a persuasive message. In other words, a sleeper effect occurs when a communication shows no immediate persuasive effects, but, after some time, the recipient of the communication becomes more favorable toward the position advocated by the message. As a
Despite the folk wisdom that “no news is good news,” almost everyone is reluctant to communicate bad news. For example, your best friend, Tom, has applied for a job that he wants very badly. You learn that he will definitely be offered the job. You can hardly wait to tell him the good news. You
Primacy Effect in Attribution Definition The primacy effect concerns how one’s impressions of others are formed. Thus, it relates to the field of psychology known as person perception, which studies how people form impressions of others. The word primacy itself is generally defined in the dictionary as the state of being first in order or
Primacy Effect in Memory Definition The primacy effect denotes the phenomenon that after encountering a long list of items, one will more likely be able to recall the first few items from that list than items than from later parts of the list. In a typical study investigating the primacy effect, participants are sequentially presented
Dilution Effect Definition The dilution effect is a judgment bias in which people underutilize diagnostic information when nondiagnostic information is also present. Diagnostic information is knowledge that is useful in making a particular judgment. Nondiagnostic information is knowledge that is not relevant to the judgment being made. For example, if a medical doctor were making
Expectancy Effect Definition An expectancy effect occurs when an incorrect belief held by one person, the perceiver, about another person, the target, leads the perceiver to act in such a manner as to elicit the expected behavior from the target. For example, if Mary is told that a new coworker, John, was unfriendly, she may
Barnum Effect Definition The Barnum effect refers to personality descriptions that a person believes applies specifically to them (more so than to other people), despite the fact that the description is actually filled with information that applies to everyone. The effect means that people are gullible because they think the information is about them only
Self-Reference Effect Definition The self-reference effect refers to people’s tendency to better remember information when that information has been linked to the self than when it has not been linked to the self. In research on the self-reference effect, people are presented with a list of adjectives (e.g., intelligent, shy) and are asked to judge
Spotlight Effect Definition The spotlight effect is a very common psychological phenomenon that psychologists define as a person’s tendency to overestimate the extent to which others notice, judge, and remember his or her appearance and behavior. In other words, it represents a person’s conviction that the social spotlight shines more brightly on him or her