In the choice between the known and the unknown, the understandable and the incomprehensible, the familiar and the unfamiliar, most people often choose in an imperceptible way for themselves what is closer, more understandable and familiar to them. In social psychology, this is sometimes referred to as the «just falling into view» effect: what comes into our field of vision more often becomes internally closer and more attractive to us.
The more often nonsense words or «Chinese characters» were presented to students at Michigan State University, the more likely they were to perceive them as a symbol of something good. In another experiment, the subjects were presented with various geometric shapes in the flashing mode (they did not have time to see them and saw only flashes of light). Despite the fact that later they could not recognize the figures that were shown to them in this way, it was these figures that they “liked more” than others.
We like people we already know more than people we don’t know. We even love ourselves more when we are the way we are used to seeing ourselves.
Theodore Mita, Marshall Dermer and Geoffrey Knight have done an amazing experiment. They took pictures of Milwaukee University students and then showed each of them a real photo of her and a photo taken from that photo’s image in a mirror. When they asked the subjects which of the two photographs they preferred, the majority chose the one taken with the help of a mirror, that is, the image of their face that they are accustomed to seeing in the mirror. When both photos were shown to close friends of the subjects, they chose the “real” picture—the image they were used to seeing.
This phenomenon is exploited by both politicians and advertisers. If people don’t have a particular relationship with a candidate or a product, just mentioning the name of the first one or the name of the second one often can increase the number of votes or sales. It is not uncommon for people to develop a mindless, automatic positive attitude towards the advertised product after repeated repetition of television advertising. Of the two little-known candidates, the one who more often «flickered» on the TV screen or was mentioned in print publications usually wins. Political technologists, who understand the role of the effect of “just getting into the field of view”, have replaced the well-founded argumentation of the candidate’s position with short videos that, like hammers, drive the names of candidates and their catchy slogans into the heads of people sitting at home…