Abstract
This study examines the hypothesis that response competition by itself is not a sufficient condition to obtain the mere exposure effect Response competition is only one determinant of conflict. It must be made psychologically relevant in order to obtain the predicted mere exposure effects. In an attempt to manipulate this importance factor experimentally, subjects were cither asked to guess or to judge the meaning of the stimuli, ss' liking of the stimuli was not influenced by frequency of exposure when they were asked to guess. When they were asked to judge the meaning and when it was stressed that they should try to be as correct as possible, liking increased with increasing exposure (p < .05) but the frequency affect relationship was clearly U-shaped. Exploration decreased significantly in all conditions but a Frequency x Importance interaction (p < .05) was also obtained.