Why People Do What They Do

Because of the Mere Exposure Effect, my family’s background has influenced my experiences just by being familiar with them and their own experiences. This is because we frequently like things we are already familiar with whether we realize it or not. Companies strategize with this effect in advertising to make us more likely to buy their products. According to the Marketing Witt Staff, “Constant exposure through television advertisements, print advertisements in journals and magazines, billboard advertising and even online ads create the effect that advertising is aiming for.” (2017 )With this exposure, you are creating more face time with the product and become so familiar with it perhaps before you have even bought it. “From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that familiarity breeds liking.

Generally speaking, things that are familiar are likely to be safer than things that are not. If something is familiar, we have clearly survived exposure to it, and our brain, recognizing this, steers us towards it.” (Raghunathan, 2017) My Mom grew up in Lake Forest, Illinois, and attended their public school system from K-12th grade. She didn’t have any choices regarding schooling because there were no charter schools around her. For college, she went to a liberal arts school in Wisconsin out of choice. My education is very similar to my mom’s in a sense that she attended competitive, well ranked public schools, and that she had a choice as to where she wanted to go for college so she did what she wanted to. I am grateful her and my dad are able to provide me with this same experience.

My Dad grew up in Bloomfield, Connecticut, and attended the Hebrew Academy of Greater Hartford from kindergarten through 8th grade. This was not by choice of his own, but of my grandmothers. She wanted him to have a smaller/more personalized educational experience, and graduating the Hebrew Academy, he was awarded to choose where he would attend high school. He then went to Bloomfield Jr High and Bloomfield High School to have a more social experience. His schooling experience was different from mine because he went to a private and public school. He dealt with pressure from his mom being an educator to do very well in school, which I interestingly feel more from my Dad in school than pressure from my Mom.

Something I noticed my Dad tried to change for the better of my own education was making sure he could financially support where I wanted to go to school, and also sending me through a public school system he was confident I would get a good education in while still having a fun social experience because it is something he was unable to do to an extent. My dad attended Uconn because he did not have a choice. His father only offered to pay for that school and chased him away from the idea of any of other schools because he told my Dad that he would graduate with a lot of debt. A pattern I picked up on in while learning about my family’s educational genealogy, is that both sides of my family show patterns of working in the same line of work as other people in their families. My Grandmother on my Mom’s side has seven other sisters, and out of the eight of them, plus my Great Grandmother, were all teachers.

Now my mom is teaching 5th grade, and her brother is teaching High school history. Growing up, my mom and her brother would spend tons of time in Germany, and going to classes with all of their relatives observing them teach. On my Father’s side, he attended law school and was planning on becoming a lawyer. When he couldn’t find a job, he decided to try out his father and uncles line of work in the stock market, and he became a financial advisor in their same company. My dad grew up attending Uconn basketball games with his Dad and his clients and used to go help my grandfather out in his office. He always admired and was interested in the work his dad and uncle did, and working with them just “felt right.” (Joshua Dunn, personal communication, December 8, 2018) As I was looking for a reason as to why this strange pattern was appearing in my family’s history, I came across the Mere Exposure Effect, which is defined as a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. In other words, we tend to like things that are familiar to us.

This is so interesting because it has no basis in logic. For example, if a person passes two strangers on the street, they are more likely to feel more trusting of a stranger they pass on their own street, over a total stranger. In “Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart,” Dr. James Doty writes about the brain’s ability to change itself based off familiarity. “Another mystery of the brain is that it will always choose what is familiar over what is unfamiliar…The brain does not distinguish between an experience that is immensely imagined and an experience that is real. I was training my mind to become a doctor long before I ever applied to college or medical school, simply by visualizing myself as a doctor.” (pg. 27) Dr. Doty was able to prepare himself for being a doctor just by being able to imagine himself where he is today because it is what he was always accustomed to.

This is something quite amazing to think about because it answers the basic question of why people do what they do. I grew up going into my mother’s classroom and helping her out with her students and work, and I have now had a plethora of different jobs working with children. I love it, and I honestly never had a reason as to why before I discovered this phenomenon. The same thing that made my parents grow up and be in their line of work is what made me grow up and go to college. There was never am I going to college? It was always I am going to college. It was imprinted in my brain because of how I grew up. With both of my parents being college graduates, there was never a time where college was not an option. Listening to them tell me about their intriguing life experiences in college and just knowing the fact that is what they did in life is what subconsciously made me never question it. Although it sounds basic, my family’s backgrounds and experiences are quite literally put me where I am today.