Robert Zajonc

Who they are: Robert Zajonc (1923–2008) was a Polish-born American social psychologist. He taught at the University of Michigan for nearly four decades before moving to Stanford University in 1994, and his research on emotion, preference and social behavior helped shape modern social psychology.

The concept HaELM draws from: in his 1968 paper “Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology), Zajonc showed that simply encountering something repeatedly makes people like it more — no argument, persuasion or conscious evaluation required. Decode uses this mere exposure effect to explain why a promotion placed inside a daily habit builds familiarity even when people only glance at it and keep scrolling.

Decode articles where their thinking appears: Spider-Man: Brand New Day × Google Maps: A Film Promotion Built into a Daily Habit

Source: Wikipedia, “Robert Zajonc”; University of Michigan, The University Record obituary; Zajonc (1968), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 9(2).