Do People Prefer Curved Objects? Angularity, Expertise, and Aesthetic Preference

By Paul J Silvia, C. Barona. 2009

248 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cc50fc0401999c9a6e6793192b1235856a1e30f6

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Paul J Silvia
2. Emily C. Nusbaum
3. Helmut Leder
4. Marco Bertamini
5. Letizia Palumbo
6. Roger E. Beaty
7. Lin-lin Chen
8. W. Hung

In Social Psychology

1. Emily C. Nusbaum
2. Christopher L. Martin
3. Helmut Leder
4. Marco Bertamini
5. Letizia Palumbo
6. Paul J Silvia
7. Lin-lin Chen
8. W. Hung

In Human-Computer Interaction

1. Emily C. Nusbaum
2. Lin-lin Chen
3. W. Hung
4. Christopher L. Martin
5. Paul J Silvia

Citations in the corpus

• Interested Experts, Confused Novices: Art Expertise and the Knowledge Emotions (2013, methodology): “The aesthetic fluency scale has been used in many studies and appears to work well (e.g., DeWall, Silvia, Schurtz, & McKenzie, 2011; Silvia, 2007b; Silvia & Barona, 2009; Silvia & Nusbaum, 2011).”
• The Curvature Effect (2016, background): “…is a phenomenon which has been confirmed with a variety of visual stimuli from abstract meaningless shapes or patterns (Bertamini et al., 2015; Silvia & Barona, 2009) to more articulated displays such as pictures or drawings of interior design spaces (Leder & Carbon, 2005; Vartanian et al.,…”
• Affective response to architecture – investigating human reaction to spaces with different geometry (2017, background): “Research indicates that angular contours are less pleasing than round contours (Silvia and Barona 2009; Bar and Neta 2006; Leder, Tinio, and Bar 2011).”
• Looking past pleasure: Anger, confusion, disgust, pride, surprise, and other unusual aesthetic emotions. (2009, background): “In the visual arts, for example, variables like pictorial balance, prototypicality, processing fluency, prior exposure, and angularity influence people's positive feelings (see Leder, Belke, Oeberst, & Augustin, 2004; Locher, 2006; Silvia & Barona, 2009).”
• Effects of Novelty and Its Dimensions on Aesthetic Preference in Product Design (2012, methodology): “By using abstract patterns, Silvia and Barona (2009) examined the effect of angularity on aesthetic preference while controlling for other possible influencing factors, such as symmetry and typicality.”
• Architectural design and the brain: effects of ceiling height and perceived enclosure on beauty judgments and approach-avoidance decisions (2015, background): “Our focus on contour in the original analyses was motivated by a strong body of empirical evidence extending back to the 1920s showing that people prefer curvilinear contour to rectilinear contour in design (Silvia & Barona, 2009).”
• A snapshot of creativity: Evaluating a quick and simple method for assessing divergent thinking (2009, methodology): “Although new, this scale has performed well in several studies (Silvia, 2007, Silvia and Barona, 2009 and Smith and Smith, 2006).”
• On personality and piloerection: Individual differences in aesthetic chills and other unusual aesthetic experiences. (2011, methodology): “This scale has worked well as a marker of expertise in past work ( Silvia, 2007; Silvia & Barona, 2009, Study 2).”
• Destination Aesthetics and Aesthetic Distance in Tourism Experience (2015, background): “For instance, it is accepted that round and symmetric objects are typically judged as more beautiful than angular and asymmetric objects (Jacobsen, Schubotz, Höfel, & Cramon, 2006; Silvia & Barona, 2009).”