The Effect of Exposed Faces on Decisions

A study conducted by Bornstein and Dagostino exposed participants to a small series of photographs of faces. Then, later on in the experiment, when they were presented with 300 faces, the participants were asked to choose which faces they liked. Participants were more likely to choose the faces they had seen before as their favourites. The researchers repeated the study with a control group who were not exposed to any faces beforehand and this group showed no preference for those faces. So, clearly, a little bit of mere exposure can change our perception and our decisions.