Developing a comprehensive model of aesthetic choice

毫无疑问，人们在审美体验上花费了大量的时间和资源，比如看电影、听音乐和其他许多体验。然而，我们对人们如何做出审美决定知之甚少，比如：“我想在这个展览中看哪幅画？”我们建议研究个人的这些审美选择：他们选择消费什么，消费多长时间，花费多少。这些问题是关于人们决策的问题。研究人员已经开发出复杂的模型来描述关于食物和金钱等商品的决策的目标、心理过程和神经表征。然而，我们缺乏这样一个全面的审美选择模型。我们有两个关于审美偏好的广义理论。一种假设是，我们最喜欢那些能激发感官系统的最佳神经刺激水平和/或认知系统的心理刺激水平的物体。另一种说法是，人们最喜欢那些最能提供感官环境统计信息的物体。这两种理论都不能解释人们审美选择的所有方面。我们建议整合这两个更广泛的理论，并利用它们来开发一个综合的审美选择模型，其架构基于不同模式的成功决策模型。我们建议设计一种实验范式，克服以往研究审美选择方法的不足。在最简单的范例中，观察者将参观一个“虚拟画廊”，在那里他们可以自由地从一个图像移动到另一个图像，而我们测量他们看每个图像的时间，并操纵图像的特征和它们的顺序。我们将评估与观看时间无关的对图像的明确喜爱程度，并与神经成像专家合作测量大脑反应。随着时间的推移，我们的范式将提供关于个人审美选择的令人信服的数据。有了这个新的范例，我们将能够建立一个全面的理论，说明个人选择消费什么、消费多长时间、消费成本是多少。

People undoubtedly spend enormous time and resources on aesthetic experiences like watching movies, listening to music, and many other experiences. Still, we know very little about how people make aesthetic decisions like: “Which painting do I want to look at in this exhibition?”. We propose to study these aesthetic choices of individuals: What they choose to consume, for how long, and at what cost. These questions are questions about people’s decision-making. Researchers have developed sophisticated models that the describe the goals, psychological processes, and the neural representations of decisions about goods like food and money. However, we lack such a comprehensive model for aesthetic choices. What we do have are two broad theories about aesthetic preferences. One posits that we like those objects most that inspire an optimal level of neural stimulation of the sensory system and/or psychological stimulation of the cognitive system. The other states that people like those objects most that best afford learning about the statistics of the sensory environment. Neither theory can account for all aspects of people's aesthetic choices.We propose to consolidate these two broader theories and use them to develop a comprehensive model of aesthetic choice whose architecture is based on successful models of decision-making in different modalities. We propose to design an experimental paradigm that overcomes the shortcomings of previous approaches of studying aesthetic choice. In the simplest version of the paradigm, observers will visit a “virtual gallery” where they are free to move from one image to another while we measure the time they look at each image and manipulate the characteristics of the images and their sequence. We will assess explicit liking of the images independent from looking time and collaborate with neuro-imaging experts to measure brain responses. Our paradigm will provide compelling data on individual aesthetic choices over time. With this new paradigm at hand, we will be able to build a comprehensive theory of what individuals choose to consume, for how long, and at what cost.