Everyday aesthetic preference: a battle of impulses

Whether enjoying a sunset or a Picasso painting, browsing the Internet or selecting wallpaper for a bedroom, our aesthetic preferences play a major part in everyday life. Nevertheless, the concept of aesthetics is still subject to much debate and confusion in both academic research and everyday use. The major cause of these misconceptions is the fact that each field of science approaches the subject from its own isolated angle, thereby often neglecting and disregarding insights from other fields of study. In this proposal, I aim to develop a comprehensive model of aesthetics that bridges aesthetic responses at the perceptual, cognitive and social level. Central to this proposal is the claim that aesthetic preferences involve striking a balance between two evolutionary rooted, and complementary pressures. One pressure is directed towards safety and protection, and favours choices that facilitate perceptual understanding, efficient processing and group membership. The other pressure involves a need for learning and accomplishment, leading to preferences for variety, novelty and uniqueness. Following from this model, the battles between these impulses operate in all sensory domains, as well as cross-modally. The model will be developed to explain aesthetic findings from a diverse range of disciplines, and allows us to formulate a new set of predictions. These predictions will be thoroughly tested on designed products within this project, because they are multi-modal, can be systematically varied, and are ecologically valid and socially significant objects of aesthetic preference. The proposed work brings together several branches of study, including (cognitive and social) psychology, consumer- and neuroscience, philosophy, HCI and design research. Along with its major theoretical contribution, the envisaged model aids designers in making deliberate aesthetic decisions, and the industry to properly adapt their products to individual, cultural and universal standards of aesthetic quality.