Self-generated visual imagery alters the mere exposure effect

To determine whether self-generated visual imagery alters liking ratings of merely exposed stimuli, 79 college students were repeatedly exposed to the ambiguous duck—rabbit figure. Half the participants were told to picture the image as a duck and half to picture it as a rabbit. When participants made liking ratings of both disambiguated versions of the figure, they rated the version consistent with earlier encoding more positively than the alternate version. Implications of these findings for theoretical models of the exposure effect are discussed.