Do you know what is exposure-effect? It means that the more frequently we see a person, the prettier we think he or she is. You may find it unbelievable, it is true though.
Try to imagine this: there are four girls in the lecture hall. They are more or less similar, appearance-wise. None of them are drop-dead gorgeous, neither is anyone of them so ugly that you can't look at her a second longer. The first one would not step into the lecture hall unless the seminar is compulsory, the second one seldom comes, the third one comes regularly and the fourth attends every single class.
You never manage to befriend anyone of them. There were occasions when you asked them to maybe move over so that you could go to your seat. There were also times when she holds the door for you but you can barely recall. One day, I show you pictures of these four girls and ask which one out of them you think is the nicest. What do most of these people say? The girl who shows up every time.
This answer is in line with the results of a similar experiment conducted by Richard Moreland and Scott Beach in'92 . In this experiment, the girls who showed up in the class with different frequencies were ranked by the boys. The boys thought that the girl who attended most classes was the wisest, the most charming and the most amiable.
Therefore, the more we see a person, the nicer we would think they are. It seems to be logical in explaining why our best friends usually don't live that far away from each other, and how lovers grow day by day. This is named as mere exposure effect, which is discovered by Robert Zajonc. He showed these facts while he was studying, but instead of women, he used Chinese characters.
There were 200 more experiments conducted and the results were still the same! Our brains work really weird.
Of course reality is somewhat different from a science lab and there are many factors which influence how we judge a person - whether we like him or her, whether we think he or she is beautiful. Say if I ask you to listen to your favourite song twice a day for two months, you would know that the theory doesn't always apply. There are things that we gradually grow sick of, no matter how we are fond of it. Constant bombardment does not always give positive results.
If that girl who sits next to you in the lecture hall right at the beginning is nothing close to being normal, or even she makes you want to run immediately. Then I think seeing her everyday will never help.
Try to imagine this: there are four girls in the lecture hall. They are more or less similar, appearance-wise. None of them are drop-dead gorgeous, neither is anyone of them so ugly that you can't look at her a second longer. The first one would not step into the lecture hall unless the seminar is compulsory, the second one seldom comes, the third one comes regularly and the fourth attends every single class.
You never manage to befriend anyone of them. There were occasions when you asked them to maybe move over so that you could go to your seat. There were also times when she holds the door for you but you can barely recall. One day, I show you pictures of these four girls and ask which one out of them you think is the nicest. What do most of these people say? The girl who shows up every time.
This answer is in line with the results of a similar experiment conducted by Richard Moreland and Scott Beach in'92 . In this experiment, the girls who showed up in the class with different frequencies were ranked by the boys. The boys thought that the girl who attended most classes was the wisest, the most charming and the most amiable.
Therefore, the more we see a person, the nicer we would think they are. It seems to be logical in explaining why our best friends usually don't live that far away from each other, and how lovers grow day by day. This is named as mere exposure effect, which is discovered by Robert Zajonc. He showed these facts while he was studying, but instead of women, he used Chinese characters.
There were 200 more experiments conducted and the results were still the same! Our brains work really weird.
Of course reality is somewhat different from a science lab and there are many factors which influence how we judge a person - whether we like him or her, whether we think he or she is beautiful. Say if I ask you to listen to your favourite song twice a day for two months, you would know that the theory doesn't always apply. There are things that we gradually grow sick of, no matter how we are fond of it. Constant bombardment does not always give positive results.
If that girl who sits next to you in the lecture hall right at the beginning is nothing close to being normal, or even she makes you want to run immediately. Then I think seeing her everyday will never help.
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