The Comfort of Familiarity

by Anastasija Šļapina

In times full of uncertainty and unease, we always come back to familiarity. We try to grasp everything that gives us some sense of control and comfort, and familiarity is a source of it. You feel at home somewhere because it’s familiar to you. Your favourites stem from familiarity - you prefer certain music, cuisine, clothes, even a way of taking notes. You are most comfortable speaking a specific language if you have used it more than any other. You even build relationships based on familiarity; repeatedly meeting somebody increases your closeness to that person. Studies have shown that we are more attracted to people who we consider familiar. And, if a person has familiar features or behaviour, we feel more at ease around them as well. At the same time, we find unfamiliarity alarming - things that are different from what we know seem disturbing or just not right.

In psychology, our preference for familiar things can be described by the mere-exposure effect or familiarity principle. The mere-exposure effect is when we develop a preference for familiar people, words, music, shapes and more, merely through exposure to them. The liking develops with repeated interaction, even if the first reaction is neutral. The mere-exposure effect works differently on things that we dislike - familiarity does not breed liking in this case. The familiarity principle was first described by Zajonc in the 1970s. He studied how living beings fear or resist something new. With repeated exposure this fear reduced and the familiarity is also associated with a concept called perceptual fluency – it’s easier to understand objects we have seen before. Our brains generally look for paths of least resistance and effort, so we prefer familiar things.

‘we find unfamiliarity alarming - things that are different from what we know seem disturbing or just not right’

Yet, more exposure does not always equal more liking - nothing is that simple. Everybody has at least one song which they have listened to again and again. Suddenly they can’t even stand the first seconds of it. Does this mean that familiarity works only to some extent? Well, one theory suggests a U-shaped perception of familiarity and novelty. We prefer familiar things when we are not overexposed to them, as at that point the scales tip towards favouring novelty.

From an evolutionary perspective, identification of our surroundings is an important ability for any living being. Every day we unconsciously and continuously distinguish and recognize people and objects around us. Familiar things seem safer and more unlikely to cause harm, because they are predictable. Our brains recognize that we have experienced or come across the thing before and stayed alive. Thus, we feel more comfortable facing the same thing again.

But how does it actually work? When encountering objects, we involve various sensory systems and contextual information to evaluate their features and identify them. Recognition memory (part of declarative memory) allows us to decide if the thing or person has been encountered before. This type of memory consists of familiarity and recollection. Here, familiarity refers to the feeling of knowing without recalling any specific details, while recollection is based on identifying those details and providing additional information on the recognised object. The pre-existing knowledge from declarative memory is then matched with sensory information processing and results in identity recognition. Context is also a significant part of familiarity, as we associate clues with objects which helps with successful recall. Meeting your barista in another setting than a coffee shop will give you a feeling of familiarity, but without the comfort that comes with it. It just makes you confused because of the missing contextual clues.

However, one cannot pinpoint the exact pieces of the brain that encode familiarity. In recognition memory tests, the familiarity brain network spans multiple areas of the brain, which are not necessarily familiarity-specific, but are most probably parts of a general executive control system. A good example of the interconnected nature of familiarity is the way that the medial prefrontal cortex mediates the recognition of familiar songs, which can trigger relevant autobiographical memories and result in more usage of the ‘rewards’ centres of the brain.

We can take advantage of the familiarity effect in our everyday lives. We can’t control it, but we can make it work for us. Familiarity should be a stepping stone for all of us. We need to use this intrinsic tool to see the beauty in the unfamiliar, to challenge our beliefs, and to grow. There is no reason for us to restrict ourselves to the things we like at this exact moment. Enjoying life comes from deriving comfort, and comfort comes from familiarity. So why not make more things familiar to us?