Exposure frequencies and sensation-seeking: No novelty effect but an unexpected experimenter-subject sex interaction

o test the hypothesis that individuals who are very sensitive to novel experiences do not show the usual exposure frequence-preference pattern, high and low sensation-seeking African-American subjects were exposed serially in random balanced order a set of 10 Japanese ideographs at 0, 1, 3, 9, and 27 frequencies. Both high and low sensation-seekers manifested the usual pattern of preference for stimuli exposed at higher frequencies and no support for a novelty sensitivity effect was observed. There was evidence of an unexpected experimenter-subject sex interaction confirming previous reports of this phenomenon. Male and female subjects reacted differently to the total experiment as a function of their level of sensation-seeking.