Does familiarity really breed contempt?

The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. In social psychology, this effect is sometimes called the familiarity principle. 

The effect has been demonstrated with many kinds of things, including words, Chinese characters, paintings, pictures of faces, geometric figures, and sounds. In studies of interpersonal attraction, the more often a person is seen by someone, the more pleasing and likable that person appears to be. You may remember thinking that So-and-so was pretty plain when you first met, but now you think she or he is quite cute.

In that last sentence, "she or he" may have somehow jarred you, because you are more familiar with "he or she" in common usage. Although the meaning is exactly the same, one feels right, and the other may feel like it represents an invasive agenda.

This might explain why someone running for public office may seem totally off-putting in the beginning of the campaign, and yet as time goes on, although the person's statements remain unchanged, public perception gradually grows friendlier. Those who do not like the person enough to turn off the television or switch channels every time she or he appears on the screen and who remain unaffected by mere exposure because they have limited their exposure, may have difficulty understand why other people start liking the person that they continue to find unappealing. 

Since Americans seemed inclined to self-censor exposure to opinions different from those already held, we select news programs that show us people with whom we agree more than those with whom we disagree, or shows them to us in favorable contexts and the others in unfavorable ones. What began as perhaps chance mere exposure develops into more-than-mere-exposure and almost exclusive-exposure.

A statistical analysis of voting patterns found that a candidate's exposure has a strong effect on the number of votes the candidate receives, distinct from the popularity of the policies the candidate advocates.

And if you think advertisers, preachers,political activists and campaign managers of all stripes are unaware of this dynamic, think again!

On the other hand, studies also show that the effect is far from universal. Where there is strong hostility between groups of people, greater exposure sometimes exacerbates the hostility, perhaps because each group is predisposed to perceive the other in a way that confirms the basis for hostility. This may be why people with strong prejudices against gay people are not changed when someone they know and like comes out of the closet. They may simply decide that the person had been deceiving them in the past, which proves how bad gay people are.

[I wish I could say I made that last bit up, but I happen to know of a specific instance where this is exactly what happened.]