Generally increased exposure to stimuli leads to increased liking (i.e., familiarity effect, mere exposure effect). For example, hearing a song repeatedly leads to greater liking of the song and familiarity with a music genre leads to liking that genre. This is well-established Social Psychology research. But, anecdotally, it seems we get bored with the same old music and come to appreciate new songs, at least within our preferred genres. This applies more broadly (e.g., art). Is there any research on this seeming novelty preference and, if so, does it have a name? The closest concept I know of would be the moderate-discrepancy hypothesis within Developmental Psychology, but this seems like it has more to do with engagement, attention, and learning - rather than liking. I ask because this became a discussion with my Social Psychology students. Thank you for your thoughts. ~ Kevin
Thank you for the interesting citations, Michael. I especially liked the individual differences measure by Pearson and the historical literature review of curiosity by Lowenstein. What I’m especially interested in finding is any ways researchers have integrated novelty preferences or needs for curiosity into an understanding of liking/attraction (i.e., how positively or negatively our attitude is toward a target). Lowenstein’s (1994) review seems to suggest some causes of curiosity, and that may help answering this question. Putting my question a bit more provocatively, why do we have a preference for novelty if we increasingly like things we gain familiarity with? ~ Kevin
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