TY - JOUR
T1 - Is better beautiful or is beautiful better? Exploring the relationship between beauty and category structure
AU - Sanders, Megan
AU - Davis, Tyler
AU - Love, Bradley C.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (MH09152), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-10-1-0268), the Army Research Laboratory (W911NF-09-2-0038), and the National Science Foundation (0927315).
PY - 2013/6
Y1 - 2013/6
N2 - We evaluate two competing accounts of the relationship between beauty and category structure. According to the similarity-based view, beauty arises from category structure such that central items are favored due to their increased fluency. In contrast, the theory-based view holds that people's theories of beauty shape their perceptions of categories. In the present study, subjects learned to categorize abstract paintings into meaningfully labeled categories and rated the paintings' beauty, value, and typicality. Inconsistent with the similarity-based view, beauty ratings were highly correlated across conditions despite differences in fluency and assigned category structure. Consistent with the theory-based view, beautiful paintings were treated as central members for categories expected to contain beautiful paintings (e.g., art museum pieces), but not in others (e.g., student show pieces). These results suggest that the beauty of complex, real-world stimuli is not determined by fluency within category structure but, instead, interacts with people's prior knowledge to structure categories.
AB - We evaluate two competing accounts of the relationship between beauty and category structure. According to the similarity-based view, beauty arises from category structure such that central items are favored due to their increased fluency. In contrast, the theory-based view holds that people's theories of beauty shape their perceptions of categories. In the present study, subjects learned to categorize abstract paintings into meaningfully labeled categories and rated the paintings' beauty, value, and typicality. Inconsistent with the similarity-based view, beauty ratings were highly correlated across conditions despite differences in fluency and assigned category structure. Consistent with the theory-based view, beautiful paintings were treated as central members for categories expected to contain beautiful paintings (e.g., art museum pieces), but not in others (e.g., student show pieces). These results suggest that the beauty of complex, real-world stimuli is not determined by fluency within category structure but, instead, interacts with people's prior knowledge to structure categories.
KW - Aesthetic preferences
KW - Categorization
KW - Fluency
KW - Halo effect
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84878482149&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3758/s13423-012-0356-1
DO - 10.3758/s13423-012-0356-1
M3 - Article
C2 - 23242799
AN - SCOPUS:84878482149
SN - 1069-9384
VL - 20
SP - 566
EP - 573
JO - Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
JF - Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
IS - 3
ER -