tailieunhanh - Novelty and Human Aesthetic Preferences

I drink tea out of a large mug that is roughly egg-shaped, and I clasp it with both hands to warm my palms. When I am petting my cat, I crouch over his body so that I can smell his fur, which at different places smells like trapped sunshine or roasted nuts, a bit like almonds but not quite. I scratch my head with a mechanical pencil that allows me to part my hair and reach exactly the right spot on my scalp. I move my wedding ring back and forth over the knuckle that offers it. | CHAPTER 11 Novelty and Human Aesthetic Preferences PE Sluckin D. J. Hargreaves and A. M. Colman It is a view widely held and well supported by evidence that novelty evokes curiosity and fear in animals both at the same time Russell 1973 . Repeated exposure to a novel stimulus object can overcome the subject s fear of it and may result in exposure learning Sluckin 1972 that is in a development of an attachment to or a preference for the object. There is no reason to believe that in this regard human beings are exceptional. In animals fear of a given figure is incompatible with attachment behaviour directed to it. In human beings too what is feared cannot at the same time be preferred. As novelty wears off however and fear wanes the initial unfavourable view of a given stimulus object will diminish arid may well gradually turn into liking but the unfavourable attitude can later return as a function of satiation and boredom Sluckin et al. 1980 . Thus one of the factors influencing favourability or aesthetic preferences is the position of the stimulus object on the novelty familiarity continuum. As Berlyne 1971 points out novelty can refer to several distinct states of affairs. When a stimulus is unlike anything encountered before we are dealing with absolute novelty strictly speaking a very rare occurrence. Novelty in most cases is really relative novelty that is unprecedented combinations of previously experienced elements. Further novelty may be short-term in the sense that the stimulus is different from stimuli experienced only recently say during the last few minutes or hours. However novelty may also be long-term an experience of a kind not encountered for a very much longer period. In all cases novelty is said to be arousing to some extent. Whether it is specifically feararousing and therefore off-putting will depend on the kind and intensity of the novelty in question. Although some novel stimuli will be disliked others at a given time relatively novel to the .