The mere exposure effect is a simple and widely studied psycholological phenomenon: The more you are exposed to something, the more you tend to like it. And the mere exposure effect works and changes your preferences, even if you are not aware of being exposed. The effect influences your liking of everything from people to songs to colors.

The impact of the mere exposure effect on politics should be obvious, but, surprisingly, not a lot of studies have been conducted on this. The mere exposure of fake news on voting behavior has been documented, but the mere exposure effect works on a much basic level: Mere exposure to images of a politician will, other things being equal, make you like that politician more. It's a scary thought and one with dire consequences. But first, let's see how the mere exposure effect works.

One of the most famous mere exposure experiments, conducted in the late 1960s at the University of Michigan in Robert Zajonc’s lab, was pretty low-tech: Subjects had to wait in the hallway before they could get started. But this was, unbeknownst to them, already part of the test. The experimenters sent grad students........

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