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Behavior

Your Feed Isn't Predicting Your Taste — It's Shaping It

1:09 · 2026-08-10

Recommendation systems don't just mirror existing preferences — through repeated exposure, they make certain content feel familiar, and familiarity itself becomes preference, creating a loop where the feed partly manufa…

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Sources behind this episode

  • peer-reviewed meta-analysisA re-examination of the mere exposure effect: The influence of repeated exposure on recognition, familiarity, and likingMontoya, Horton, Vevea, Citkowicz, Lauber 2017, Psychological Bulletin 143(5), 459-498
  • peer-reviewed monographAttitudinal effects of mere exposureZajonc 1968, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Monograph Supplement 9, 1-27
  • peer-reviewed large-scale experimentExperimental study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural marketSalganik, Dodds, Watts 2006, Science 311(5762), 854-856
  • peer-reviewed conference paper, simulation studyHow algorithmic confounding in recommendation systems increases homogeneity and decreases utilityChaney, Stewart, Engelhardt 2018, RecSys 18
  • peer-reviewed conference paper, theory and simulationPreference Amplification in Recommender SystemsKalimeris, Bhagat, Kalyanaraman, Weinsberg 2021, KDD 21
  • peer-reviewed experimentEffects of perceptual fluency on affective judgmentsReber, Winkielman, Schwarz 1998, Psychological Science 9(1), 45-48

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