Cognitive consequences of novelty and familiarity: How mere exposure influences level of construal

By Jens Förster. 2009

92 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Two experiments examine whether frequency of exposure influences level of construal. Using subliminal presentation, participants were exposed to neutral, unknown letters 0, 5, 15, or 40 times, and a typical mere exposure effect was found on evaluation. However, we hypothesized and showed in Experiment 1 that novelty enhances Gestalt-like, global perception, whereas familiarity bolsters detail-oriented, local perception. Furthermore, in Experiment 2, we demonstrated that participants generated more abstract solutions for items presented less frequently. These results support a Construal level theory [Liberman, N., Trope, Y., & Stephan, E. (2007). Psychological distance. In E. T. Higgins & A. W. Kruglanski, Social psychology, handbook of basic principles. New York: Guilford Press.] contention that distance from direct experience is associated with high construal level and global processing. It seems that in order to prepare for novel events, people automatically engage in higher levels of construal. New information needs to be integrated into existing knowledge structures in order to be understood, and abstract categories and global processing may support the process of understanding.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9c80c7039357733a33245dd3a30a8266ce7025ed

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Citations in the corpus

The Primal Mark: How the Beginning Shapes the End in the Development of Creative Ideas (2014, background): “Because employees tend to take the basic structure of familiar ideas for granted (Finke, 1990; Ward, 1994), they are likely to get ‘‘stuck in the weeds’’ and focus on relatively minor modifications to any familiar ideas that come to mind (Förster, 2009).”
The Common Currency of Psychological Distance (2013, background): “In addition, if an object tends to enter direct experience more often, this familiarity engenders a sense of psychological closeness (Förster, 2009).”
Construing creativity: The how and why of recognizing creative ideas (2014, background): “Furthermore, exposure to novel, unfamiliar stimuli tends to activate global, abstract processing (Förster, 2009; Förster, Liberman, & Shapira, 2009); a broader, global perspective seems to prepare one best for understanding novel information (Förster, Marguc, & Gillebaart, 2010).”