EXPOSURE FREQUENCIES AND SENSATION-SEEKING - NO NOVELTY EFFECT BUT ANUNEXPECTED EXPERIMENTER-SUBJECT SEX INTERACTION

To test the hypothesis that individuals who are very sensitive to nove l experiences do not show the usual exposure frequence-preference patt ern, high and low sensation-seeking African-American subjects were exp osed serially in random balanced order a set of 10 Japanese ideographs at 0, 1, 3, 9, and 27 frequencies. Both high and low sensation-seeker s manifested the usual pattern of preference for stimuli exposed at hi gher frequencies and no support for a novelty sensitivity effect was o bserved. There was evidence of an unexpected experimenter-subject sex interaction confirming previous reports of this phenomenon. Male and f emale subjects reacted differently to the total experiment as a functi on of their level of sensation-seeking.