Relative Processing Fluency

The subjective ease, or fluency, that is experienced during the cognitive processing of information has a large impact on the outcome of the processing. Research on judgment in a variety of domains shows that such fluency effects depend less on the (absolute) level of experienced fluency than on the relative fluency—that is, the change in fluency or the deviation from the expected level of fluency. Changes in an internal state are often more noticeable and perhaps more relevant as a diagnostic cue regarding the environment than the absolute level of that state. Relative experience is therefore particularly informative and accounts for ease-of-retrieval effects as well as classic fluency effects such as the truth effect and the mere-exposure effect.