Have you heard about the Bird?

So as I was thinking about what to write for this blog, the song Surfin' Bird started playing from my iTunes. Immediately, it reminded me of how Matt's girlfriend, Mary, really hates the song, whereas Matt and myself like it. I think the reason for this is that she's been overexposed to the song, meaning that she's heard the song one too many times.

Overexposure is considered a limitation to the mere-exposure effect (Giuliano's lecture, 4/19/10). The mere-exposure effect is a phenomenon whereby the more often people are exposed to a stimulus, the more positively they evaluate that stimulus (Zajonc, 1968). This effect affects people by exposing them to any sort of stimulus be it another person, word, shape, or song.

The mere-exposure effect explains why when we initially see or hear something, our opinion is less positive than after we've seen or heard something a few times. I know that this happens to me a lot...especially with music. For example, when I first heard the song You Belong with Me by Taylor Swift in the dentist office I worked at over the summer I thought, "Meh, it's ok." After hearing it a few more times, the song grew on me and I eventually came to like it. However, by the middle of the summer I had heard the song too many times and anytime it came on I made my way to the file room where the music could not reach me.

The mere-exposure effect has also affected me with how friendly I am with people. I know that the more I see a person, the more likely I am to chat with them or at the minimum throw them a smile as we pass each other walking. With such a small campus the proximity between ourselves and those we interact with on a regular basis whether in passing or not, strengthens the mere-exposure effect (Latane, Liu, Nowak, Bonevento, & Zheng, 1995).

Overall, there are plenty of things I've come to like after being exposed to them enough and when I find something that someone has been overexposed to, I usually take advantage of it just to see what happens. I say this because Surfin' Bird didn't randomly start playing...I chose it to annoy her in the living room, which eventually lead to both Matt and myself singing it to do more damage. All in all, a song well played.

References:

Latane, B., Liu, J. H., Nowak, A., Bonevento, M., & Zheng, L. (1995). Distance matters: Physical space and social impact. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 795-805.

Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Monograph Supplement, 9(2), 1-27.

Halloween...How I Love Thee

Halloween is probably my favorite time of year. I love it because you can be whatever you want to be and almost do whatever you want. One of my favorite things to do is to run around neighborhoods acting all sorts goofy: dancing in the street, chasing a friend of mine, being chased by a friend of mine, and most of all scaring other people. Little did I know that the term for acting this way was deindividuation. Deindividuation is the loss of a person's sense of individuality and the reduction of normal constraints against deviant behavior (Zimbardo, 1969).

Whenever I would go trick-or-treating, I usually went in a group or with at least one other person. The addition of people to do stuff with me helped lower the accountability I would feel for doing some act of silliness I would undoubtedly perform. By lowering the accountability, I would not feel as responsible for my actions (Dodd, 1985). Also the addition of the mask also prevented the people on the outside from knowing who I was. This addition of the mask helped me lose my sense of self-awareness which also helped me increase my deviant acts (Beaman et al., 1979).
One of my goals in my life is to build a haunted house that would play on all the major fears. While I'm nowhere near the point of being able to create said haunted house, I was the mastermind behind the haunted house that was built on the second floor of Mabee two years ago. These are just a couple of the pictures from the maze. More can be seen on my Facebook.

Here is also a video. The person going through the maze is going through it backwards and I'm that goofy looking thing that's supposed to be a zombie that follows him around.



Overall, the maze was a resounding success. When the professors brought their children around, about three-quarters of them made it through completely and a good number of those that did were crying or wanting to escape Mabee hall. When it was actually dark in the maze, we scared a good number of college students as well. Our floor won scariest hall for that year and had the maze building banned the following year. All I can say is WOOT!


References:

Beaman, A. L., Klentz, B., Diener, E., & Svanum, S. (1979). Objective self-awareness and transgression in children: A field study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1835-1846.

Dodd, D. K. (1985). Robbers in the classroom: A deindividuation exercise. Teaching in Psychology, 12, 89-91.

Zimbardo, P. G. (1969). The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 17, 237-307.