Social Engineering Blogs

For our project, we wanted to see if our posters could influence whether people would favour vegetarian options in Xananas. We designed a poster which promoted the choice of vegetarianism and veganism. We wanted to see if the mere exposure of the posters, could influence the choice of meal they have at xananas. The mere exposure effect (also known as the familiarity principle) suggests that people favour stimuli they have been repeatedly exposed to compared to unfamiliar stimuli (Zajonc, 1968). By sticking up our posters around campus, we hope that the mere exposure and familiarity of ‘the vegetarian option’ will aid people to pick vegetarian menu items in Xananas. To see if our posters had any effect, we compared the average of term 2 meal sales to one day where we exposed our posters. We wanted to see if the sales of vegetarian meals increased. Our results can be seen in the table. For breakfast and main meals there is an increase in vegetarian sales. However, starters and sandwiches did not increase with the exposure of our posters.To some extent, we can suggest that the exposure effect has been seen and has influenced peoples’ choices in their meals. Jessi Silvester, Laura Schmidt, Hannah Stewart & Robyn CufleyReferences Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of personality and social psychology, 9, 1.

Sometimes people seem really creepy. Why? What is about them that makes them creepy? And how can you avoid this awful social trap?