Psychology and Visual Aesthetics

Originally published in 1972, the aim of Psychology and Visual Aesthetics was to present a study mainly concerned with experimental work on visual aesthetics. From the rather restricted approaches of Fechner, the pioneer of experimental aesthetics, whose book Vorschule der Aesthetik was published in 1876, there had been a spread of interest out of the confines of the psychological laboratory to statistical studies, personality problems and social psychology. Although not a history of experimental aesthetics is was hoped that the various phases of development would be apparent, as follows: at first laboratory studies, mainly on individuals; then statistically oriented studies with numbers of subjects; in the 1940s the beginnings of the mathematical analysis of aesthetic judgments; then the introduction of personality studies, including the problems of the aesthetic judgments of psychiatric patients; and in the 1950s and 1960s the development of studies based on social psychology and the cross-cultural approaches.

These changes had taken place, hand in hand with developments in psychology as a whole and of psychological techniques, as will be evident in the chapters that follow. The changes correspond to the successive developments of Fechnerian experimental work, then of Gestalt Psychology, then intelligence tests and tests of special capacities and abilities, then personality tests and the understanding of abnormal psychology, and finally the expansion of research into what was now often called experimental social psychology. Today it can be read in its historical context.

This book is a re-issue originally published in 1972. The language used is a reflection of its era and no offence is meant by the Publishers to any reader by this re-publication.