Aesthetic Emotions and Aesthetic People: Openness Predicts Sensitivity to Novelty in the Experiences of Interest and Pleasure

There is a stable relationship between the Openness/Intellect domain of personality and aesthetic engagement. However, neither of these are simple constructs and while the relationship exists, process based evidence explaining the relationship is still lacking. This research sought to clarify the relationship by evaluating the influence of the Openness and Intellect aspects on several different aesthetic emotions. Two studies looked at the between- and within-person differences in arousal and the emotions of interest, pleasure and confusion in response to visual art. 

The results suggest that Openness, as opposed to Intellect, was predictive of greater arousal, interest and pleasure, while both aspects explained less confusion. Differences in Openness were associated with within-person emotion appraisal contingencies, particularly greater novelty-interest and novelty-pleasure relationships. Those higher in Openness were particularly influenced by novelty in artworks. 

For pleasure this relationship suggested a different qualitative structure of appraisals. The appraisal of novelty is part of the experience of pleasure for those high in Openness, but not those low in Openness. This research supports the utility of studying Openness and Intellect as separate aspects of the broad domain and clarifies the relationship between Openness and aesthetic states in terms of within-person appraisal processes.

Below:  A depiction of the multilevel models

Full article at:   http://goo.gl/zRdkM7

By:   Kirill Fayn,1,* Carolyn MacCann,1 Niko Tiliopoulos,1 and Paul J. Silvia2

¹School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

²Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA

Edited by: Nadin Beckmann, Durham University, UK

Reviewed by: Cornelia Wrzus, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany; Matthias Ziegler, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany

*Correspondence: Kirill Fayn, ua.ude.yendys.inu@nyafk

  

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Personality, Parasites, Political Attitudes, and Cooperation: A Model of How Infection Prevalence Influences Openness and Social Group Formation

What is the origin of individual differences in ideology and personality? According to the parasite stress hypothesis, the structure of a society and the values of individuals within it are both influenced by the prevalence of infectious disease within the society's geographical region. High levels of infection threat are associated with more ethnocentric and collectivist social structures and greater adherence to social norms, as well as with socially conservative political ideology and less open but more conscientious personalities. 

Here we use an agent-based model to explore a specific opportunities-parasites trade-off (OPTO) hypothesis, according to which utility-maximizing agents place themselves at an optimal point on a trade-off between (a) the gains that may be achieved through accessing the resources of geographically or socially distant out-group members through openness to out-group interaction, and (b) the losses arising due to consequently increased risks of exotic infection to which immunity has not been developed. 

We examine the evolution of cooperation and the formation of social groups within social networks, and we show that the groups that spontaneously form exhibit greater local rather than global cooperative networks when levels of infection are high. It is suggested that the OPTO model offers a first step toward understanding the specific mechanisms through which environmental conditions may influence cognition, ideology, personality, and social organization.

Below:  Effects of learning on openness for different values of the probability of infection associated with most distant neighbors

Full article at:  http://goo.gl/8IUg6L

By:  Brown GD1, Fincher CL1, Walasek L1.

• 1Department of Psychology, University of Warwick. 

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