Repeated exposures to an object will lead to an enhancement of evaluation toward that object. Although this mere exposure effect (MEE) may occur when the objects are presented subliminally, the role of conscious perception per se on evaluation has never been examined. Here we use a binocular rivalry paradigm to investigate whether variance in conscious perceptual duration of faces has an effect on their subsequent evaluation, and how selective attention and memory interact with this effect. Participants first performed a binocular rivalry task consisting of a free rivalry block and an attending block. In the free rivalry block, two faces were projected individually to left and right eye to produce rivalry experience and participants were required to report the dominant percept. In the attending task, the stimulus configuration was identical to those in the free rivalry block, except that participants were instructed to attend to one of each pair of faces. After the binocular rivalry phase, participants performed an unexpected evaluation and recall task, which were consisted of novel and previously presented faces. Replicating MEE, the results showed that previously exposed faces were more positively evaluated than novel faces. Furthermore, variance in conscious perceptual duration of the faces did not affect evaluation, whereas attended faces were better evaluated than the non-attended faces. Finally, this effect is not due to attended faces were better memorized because subjects could not recall which face had been attended to. Collectively, our finding suggests that MEE can be modulated by selective attention but not visual awareness.
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