Zajonc's first marriage, to Donna Benson, ended in divorce. He had three sons with Benson: Peter, Michael, and Joseph Zajonc. He spent the rest of his life with his second wife, Hazel Rose Markus, a social psychologist at Stanford, known for her contributions to cultural psychology. Zajonc had one child with Markus, a daughter named Krysia. He died in Stanford, California from pancreatic cancer on December 3, 2008, at the age of 85. Contributions Mere-exposure effect One of Zajonc's contributions to psychology is the demonstration of the mere-exposure effect. The exposure effect demonstrates a phenomenon by which people show a preference towards an object simply because they are familiar with it. He focused on processes involved in social behavior, with an emphasis on the relationship between affect, or emotion, and cognition. Zajonc claims that this phenomenon exists across cultures, species, and different stimulation. One experiment he did with fertilized chicken eggs and rats provides evidence for the mere-exposure effect. He also proposes that the mere-exposure effect proceeds unconsciously through a subliminal channel. Social facilitation Another contribution that Zajonc made to psychology was through demonstrating social facilitation. Social facilitation is the improvement of performance around the presence of others. Zajonc was able to provide support for social facilitation through a variety of experiments. In one experiment he sought to see if individuals would change their decisions depending on the presence of an audience. He found that in the presence of an audience, the dominant preference would be enhanced. In another experiment on social facilitation, Robert Zajonc gave participants associations to 184 words alone and in the presence of an audience. Half of the participants worked alone, then with an audience, and vice versa. Zajonc found that participants were effected by the presence of an audience, and fewer unique responses were given when with an audience. The audience acts as a general drive energizer, in the presence of an audience there would be an increased probability of the dominant response. Preferences need no inferences In 1980, a speculative and widely debated paper entitled "Feeling and Thinking: Preferences Need No Inferences," invited in honor of his receipt of the 1979 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, made the argument that affective and cognitive systems are largely independent, and that affect is more powerful and comes first. This paper stimulated a great deal of interest in affect in psychology, and was