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Abstract:
People constantly evaluate what they see, and these evaluations determine their choices from small (Where do I look next?) to large (Where do I want to live?). The pleasure associated with a sensory experience, namely its aesthetic value, is perhaps the most frequent and important evaluation. Yet, we have a poor understanding of how sensory experiences gain aesthetic value. We propose a model of aesthetic value that is based on the premise that observers maintain and adapt the states of their cognitive-sensory system in a way that allows them to process stimuli effectively in both the present and the future. Two interlinked components generate value: stimulus processing fluency and the change in fluency with regard to likely future stimuli. In our model, processing fluency is quantified precisely as the likelihood of the stimulus given an observer's state and constitutes immediate sensory reward. The change in fluency with which likely future stimuli will be processed, quantified by the change in the average likelihood of expected future stimuli, constitutes the reward of learning. Simulations show that a simple version of our model can account for empirical data on the effects of exposure, complexity, and symmetry on aesthetic value judgments. Its application offers insight as to how mechanisms that improve long-term processing efficiency give rise to aesthetic value judgments.
