A Result in Visual Aesthetics

Subjects were given eight forms and asked to sort them in a number of ways on the basis of overall similarity; they were also asked to state the order of their preferences among the forms. From the data generated, four tentative results emerged: By giving ourselves an appropriate verbal set, we can make ourselves see (and categorize) a group of forms in many different ways. It appears, however, that there is a natural way of categorizing them which is independent of any verbal set, and which depends on the formation of visual non‐verbal concepts. Preference for the forms is dependent on the way the forms are seen—on the visual similarity dimensions. But the dependence is incomplete. It might perhaps be better called a linkage—comparable to the linkage between hue and brightness. The peculiarly weak nature of this linkage suggests the hypothesis that the beauty of a form cannot be explained in terms of any visible qualities or attributes that it has, but only in terms of the operations performed in the brain of the observer. Aesthetic discrimination is independent of all other kinds of perceptual discrimination

Categorization · Cognitive psychology · Hue · Image (mathematics) · Information retrieval · Linkage (software) · Natural (archaeology) · Observer (physics) · Perception · Preference · Set (abstract data type) · Similarity (geometry) · sort · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Artificial Intelligence · Color perception and design · Communication · Computer Science · Mathematics · Psychology · Social Psychology

• The Multidimensional Structure of Mythological Hybrid (Part-Human, Part-Animal) Figures

  Harvey Nash, Henry Pieszko•The Journal of General Psychology•1982

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