ArticlePDF Available

The Science of Style: In Fashion, Colors Should Match Only Moderately

PLOS
PLOS One
Authors:

Abstract and Figures

Fashion is an essential part of human experience and an industry worth over $1.7 trillion. Important choices such as hiring or dating someone are often based on the clothing people wear, and yet we understand almost nothing about the objective features that make an outfit fashionable. In this study, we provide an empirical approach to this key aesthetic domain, examining the link between color coordination and fashionableness. Studies reveal a robust quadratic effect, such that that maximum fashionableness is attained when outfits are neither too coordinated nor too different. In other words, fashionable outfits are those that are moderately matched, not those that are ultra-matched ("matchy-matchy") or zero-matched ("clashing"). This balance of extremes supports a broader hypothesis regarding aesthetic preferences-the Goldilocks principle-that seeks to balance simplicity and complexity.
Content may be subject to copyright.
The Science of Style: In Fashion, Colors Should Match
Only Moderately
Kurt Gray
1
*, Peter Schmitt
1
, Nina Strohminger
2
, Karim S. Kassam
3
1 Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America, 2 Department of Psychology, Duke University, Durham,
North Carolina, United States of America, 3 Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Abstract
Fashion is an essential part of human experience and an industry worth over $1.7 trillion. Important choices such as hiring or
dating someone are often based on the clothing people wear, and yet we understand almost nothing about the objective
features that make an outfit fashionable. In this study, we provide an empirical approach to this key aesthetic domain,
examining the link between color coordination and fashionableness. Studies reveal a robust quadratic effect, such that that
maximum fashionableness is attained when outfits are neither too coordinated nor too different. In other words,
fashionable outfits are those that are moderately matched, not those that are ultra-matched (‘‘matchy-matchy’’) or zero-
matched (‘‘clashing’’). This balance of extremes supports a broader hypothesis regarding aesthetic preferences–the
Goldilocks principle–that seeks to balance simplicity and complexity.
Citation: Gray K, Schmitt P, Strohminger N, Kassam KS (2014) The Science of Style: In Fashion, Colors Should Match Only Moderately. PLoS ONE 9(7): e102772.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0102772
Editor: Brock Bastian, University of New South Wales, Australia
Received January 16, 2014; Accepted June 23, 2014; Published July 17, 2014
Copyright: ß 2014 Gray et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: This study was funded by departmental funds at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and
analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
* Email: kurtgray@unc.edu
Introduction
Every day, people ask themselves the question: ‘‘What to wear?’’
People want outfits that are maximally fashionable, and this isn’t
mere vanity: clothing influences perceived and signaled social
identity [1], employment outcomes [2], romantic success [3], and
even cognitive processes [4]. Despite its universal human
importance and vast financial worth–the fashion industry is valued
at
$1.7 trillion (more than double the entire U.S. federal science
budget) –there is little empirical psychological research on the
objective features which make something fashionable. In this
study, we provide an empirical approach to fashionableness,
through judgments of color combinations. We uncover practical
implications for daily life, and in doing so speak to a broader
theory in aesthetics and human preferences–the Goldilocks
Principle.
The Goldilocks Principle represents a tradition of philosophical
thought stretching back millennia: Aristotle’s Golden mean,
Buddha’s middle way, and Confucius’ Doctrine of the Mean all
represent a balance between two extremes. The Goldilocks
Principle has psychological support in a variety of domains, as
infants prefer looking at visual sequences that are neither too
complex, nor too simple [5], and optimum psychological well-
being–i.e., flow–is achieved when experiences balance simplicity
and complexity [6]. The optimal distinctiveness model of social
identity suggests that when developing a sense of self, we strive to
strike a harmonious balance between similarity with others and
individual distinctiveness [7]. Furthermore, judgments of facial
attractiveness across cultures are predicted by averageness [8] [9],
suggesting that the aesthetic ideal is found not at the extremes, but
rather in balance.
In terms of fashion, there are two popular approaches to style
that represent ‘‘extremes.’’ On one hand, we often speak as if the
most fashionable outfits are those that fully coordinate or ‘‘match’’
[10]. This suggests that pairing the same or similar colors with
each other may be the key to fashion. On the other hand, fashion
is often about being noticed, and so we might want color
combinations that maximally differ from each other and ‘‘pop’’
[11]. Between these two extremes, the Goldilocks Principle
suggests that the best color combinations are those that are
neither too similar (‘‘matchy-matchy’’) nor too different (‘‘clash-
ing’’).
In this paper, we investigate whether the Goldilocks Principle
predicts fashionableness across diverse color combinations in both
men’s and women’s outfits. Support for the principle would be
illustrated by a ‘‘peak’’ in ratings, such that any linear trends
between coordination and fashionableness should be qualified by a
quadratic effect such that maximum fashionableness is achieved by
moderate color coordination.
Method
This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All participants
provided written informed consent prior to completing the study
and were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mTurk).
A total of 239 mTurk participants (69% women, M
age
= 35.4,
SD
age
= 12.9) each saw 30 different color combinations, in one of
four color palettes. Palettes 1 and 2 were in women’s clothing, and
palettes 3 and 4 were in men’s clothing. Each palette included 4
colors, illustrated in Figure 1. Out of 256 possible color
combinations within each set, we selected combinations quasi-
PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 1 July 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 7 | e102772
randomly to represent a range of coordination, from all matching
to all different (see Figure 1 for sample outfits, Table S1 for all
outfit combinations, Figure S1 for screen shots of fashionableness,
and Figure S2 for screen shots of coordination judgments).
Fashionableness Judgments
Participants rated clothing sets on how fashionable, good, and
liked they were on five point Likert scales. Ratings were
aggregated across participants to yield an overall fashionableness
rating for each combination (all as ..95), which were Z-scored
within each palette.
Coordination Calculations
Rather than solicit global ratings of coordination, participants
rated the coordination of all possible pairs of color swatches within
each palette through 3 items–coordinated, matching and similar–
answered on five point Likert scales (a’s ..81). These pairwise
judgments were aggregated for each outfit, and Z-scored within
each palette, to create an overall coordination score. Thus,
Figure 1. Coordination/Matching (z-score).
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0102772.g001
The Science of Style
PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 2 July 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 7 | e102772
combinations with all similar or highly coordinated colors (e.g.,
only shades of green) received high scores whereas those with very
different colors (e.g., red, blue, black, grey) received low scores (see
Materials and Methods S1 for additional detail on these
calculations).
Analysis
Curve estimation was used to assess linear and quadratic effects
of coordination on fashionableness. Women’s and men’s clothing
were analyzed separately.
Results
Women’s Clothing
Analyses revealed a significant linear trend, R
2
= .18, F (1,
58) = 13.04, p = .001, such that more coordination was linked to
more fashionableness, consistent with the general importance of
matching. Importantly, however, this linear trend was qualified by
the predicted quadratic effect, R
2
= .44, F (2, 57) = 22.23, p,.001,
such that peak fashionableness was achieved by moderately
coordinated combinations. This quadratic effect accounted for
twice as much variance as the linear effect.
Men’s Clothing
Analyses did not reveal a significant linear trend, F,1, but did
reveal the predicted quadratic trend, R
2
= .28, F (2, 57) = 11.18,
p,.001, such that peak fashionableness was again achieved by
moderately coordinated combinations.
Discussion
These data suggest a simple answer to the question ‘‘what to
wear?’’ Select a color combination that is neither completely
uniform, nor completely different. Certainly, moderate matching
is not the only key to fashion, which varies across time and culture
and depends upon many factors including cut, design, and
trendiness. However, these studies reveal that, with all other
factors held constant, the Goldilocks principle predicted judgments
across four different color palettes in both men’s and women’s
clothing. To examine the external validity of these findings, future
research should test this idea in naturalistic settings, such as in
magazines and runway shows.
These results are consistent with both centuries of philosophical
thought and more recent psychological studies on the importance
of ‘‘the middle way.’’ The Goldilocks principle may also explain
aesthetic judgments beyond fashion, reflecting a basic principle of
human preference that seeks to balance simplicity and complexity,
order and disorder. Indeed, people prefer music that balances
melodic simplicity and complexity [12]. This quantitative analysis
of fashion is only a first step in empirical aesthetics, but it
highlights the utility of bringing science to art; psychological
science can help explain the important but often invisible
judgments of daily life.
Supporting Information
Figure S1 Rating a sample outfit combination.
(DOCX)
Figure S2 Rating a sample color pair.
(DOCX)
Table S1 Clothing combinations by color palette.
(DOCX)
Table S2 Cronbach’s Alphas for scales used.
(DOCX)
Materials and Methods S1 Extended materials & meth-
ods.
(DOCX)
Results S1 Extended results.
(DOCX)
Acknowledgments
We thank Adam Waytz for helpful comments.
Author Contributions
Conceived and designed the experiments: KG PS NS KK. Performed the
experiments: KG PS. Analyzed the data: KG PS. Wrote the paper: KG PS
NS KK.
References
1. Berger J, Heath C (2008) Who drives divergence? Identity signaling, outgroup
dissimilarity, and the abandonment of cultural tastes. J Pers Soc Psychol 95:
593–607. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.95.3.593.
2. Forsythe SM (1990) Effect of applicant’s clothing on interviewer’s decision to
hire. J Appl Soc Psychol 20: 1579–1595.
3. Hoult TF (1954) Experimental measurement of clothing as a factor in some
social ratings of selected American men. Am Sociol Rev 19: 324–328.
4. Adam H, Galinsky AD (2012) Enclothed cognition. J Exp Soc Psychol 48: 918–
925. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2012.02.008.
5. Kidd C, Piantadosi ST, Aslin RN (2012) The Goldilocks Effect: Human Infants
Allocate Attention to Visual Sequences That Are Neither Too Simple Nor Too
Complex. PLoS ONE 7: e36399. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036399 .
6. Csikszentmihalyi M (1990) Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper
& Row.
7. Brewer MB (1991) The social self: on being the same and different at the same
time. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 17: 475–482. doi:10.1177/0146167291175001.
8. Apicella C L, Little AC, Marlow e FW (2007) Facial avera geness and
attractiveness in an isolated population of hunter-gatherers. Perception 36:
1813–1820. doi:10.1068/p5601.
9. Langlois JH, Roggman LA (1990) Attractive faces are only average. Psychol Sci
1: 115–121. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1990.tb00079.x.
10. Patel N (2013) Wear the trend: monochrome. Vogue India. Available: http://
www.vogue.in/content/wear-trend-monochrome-springsummer-2013. Ac-
cessed 2013 Dec 4.
11. Espinoza J (2011) Spanish fashion designer Agatha Ruiz de la Prada practices
staying in bed. Wall Str J. Available: http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB10001424052748704709304576124012375977474.html. Accessed 2013 Dec
17.
12. Huron D (2006) Sweet anticipation: music and the psychology of expectation.
Cambridge, Mass. u.a.: MIT Press.
The Science of Style
PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 3 July 2014 | Volume 9 | Issue 7 | e102772
... Liu, Wu et al., 2022;R. Post et al., 2017), atmospherics of stores (Jang et al., 2018;Logkizidou, 2021), arrangements of objects (Van Geert & Wagemans, 2021), and a variety of products, such as chairs (Loos et al., 2022), clothes (Gray et al., 2014), and motorcycles (Nasar, 1987;R. A. G. Post et al., 2016). ...
Article
Full-text available
Tactile experiences are a pivotal part of consumer behavior and choice. However, very little is known about why consumers esthetically appreciate touching products. The principle of Unity‐in‐Variety, stating that consumers like to perceive variety but only when this variety is presented as a coherent whole, has been shown to partly explain consumers' esthetic appreciation in the visual domain. We theorize that the psychological mechanisms underlying the esthetic principle of Unity‐in‐Variety are modality‐independent, and therefore that this principle also applies to consumers' tactile esthetic appreciation. Across three studies, using existing products and novel 3D printed product designs systematically manipulated along the perceptual dimensions of unity and variety, we show that both unity and variety independently contribute to tactile esthetic appreciation. Furthermore, because unity and variety are inherently partial opposites, esthetic appreciation of products is highest when both unity and variety are simultaneously maximized.
... Fashion can be described as a way of life revolving around activities and interests and is often shaped by cultural values influencing gender, age, and social attitudes [7]. Indeed, fashion has become an essential part of the human experience and is related to people's aesthetic preferences [8]. Regarding the lifestyle, Veblen (1899) described the phenomenon of leisure and lifestyle of the leisure class in his book entitled "The Theory of the Leisure Class." ...
Article
Full-text available
Today, elite athletes form an important social group, and the non-sport facets of their lives matter as much as their sports performances. However, there has been little empirical research on the lifestyles of elite athletes. Therefore, this study aimed to develop knowledge about the Iranian elite athletes’ lifestyle. The study was conducted with a qualitative approach in two phases. Glaserian grounded theory was used in the first phase, and thematic analysis was used in the second phase. Participants of the first phase included 19 sports experts, such as sports sociologists, sports psychologists, and sports coaches, who were selected by purposive and snowball sampling methods for holding unstructured in-depth interviews. The data were simultaneously analyzed using a set of open, theoretical, selective coding and memos. The codes were grouped into three different categories with different natures. The emerged theory advanced our understanding of the lifestyle shaping structures of elite athletes, lifestyle indicators, and even professionalization of their lifestyles. According to the results, the Iranian elite athletes’ lifestyles include indicators, such as professional mindset, competencies, life vision, financial literacy, responsibility, consumption, leisure, personal issues, and religious behavior. Subjects of the second phase were 44 Iranian athletes in the national levels who participated voluntarily in the study. The data were analyzed by thematic analysis method, and lifestyles typologies were identified. Based on results, five dominant lifestyles among the Iranian elite athletes were identified: consumerist, easy going, socially useful, profit-oriented, and professional. Finally, the features of each lifestyle were discussed.
... First, high brightness, warm tones, and medium to high saturation shape a kawaii style, and men prefer blue over women (Ohkura et al. 2008;Kiyosawa 2014). Second, soft, furry, and neat textures form a kawaii style, while rough textures Color (Choo and Kim 2003;Gray et al. 2014) Properly coordinated colors can improve the fashion of clothing; colors can significantly affect the style of fashion fabrics Fabric texture (Choo and Kim 2003) Texture can affect the style of fashion fabrics independently or in combination with color Clothing shape (Chang et al. 2003) The shape of each part of the clothing affects the overall fashion style categorization Model pose (Heo and Chung 2014;Millard and Grant 2006) The pose of the fashion model influences the fashion style the clothing expresses Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved. ...
Article
Full-text available
With the popularity of Japanese products and kawaii culture in China, understanding how the Chinese perceive kawaii style will help to satisfy their emotional needs in product design. To overcome the problems of expansion difficulty and low efficiency due to expert dependence on traditional methods, this study combines deep learning and Kansei engineering to recognize and analyze the kawaii style by taking female fashion clothing as an example. We build a perceptual annotation database containing 7000 female fashion pictures, each of which has 8 valid kawaii scores labeled by participants, with 4 scores from men and 4 scores from women. Then, we train two neural models and obtain a classification network (kawaii vs. non-kawaii) with 84.45% accuracy and a regression network (the value of kawaii) with an average error of 0.42 points. These recognition models perform better than manual recognition for the kawaii style. In addition, to analyze the kawaii formation of female fashion clothing, we detect the design features of kawaii styles, non-kawaii styles, and gender differences using the neuron analysis method and summarize the corresponding design elements. Finally, using three exploratory experiments, we extend the models to similar products, different types of products, and different visual styles. Overall, we apply deep learning to achieve automatic support in the product design of the kawaii style without the reliance on experts and intensive labor.
... Those observer's perception changes will demand a series of special characteristics to be considered during the choices of the colors during the design of a product . Far beyond these aspects of ambience, the object or surface on which the color is used will also serve as a link for altering the chromatic perception between artifact and spectator, especially when understanding that shape and color are inseparable aspects , Gray et al. 2014. ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Light and lighting in fashion and textile design generally relate to the viewing and production of a fashion or textile collection in daylight, or integrating LEDs, electro-luminescent wires, and optical fibres in the structures of fabrics to create a light-emitting fashion or textile collection. This ignores the potential that coloured light as material for design can bring into these disciplines. This paper aims to investigate coloured light as a material for design in relation both to physical environments and immersive virtual reality, and to develop design methods for fashion and textile design that could lead to a re-learning of coloured light as a material for design for developing novel artistic expressions. The first series of experiments focused on addressing the following questions in both physical and virtual reality: How do coloured surfaces and coloured light interact? How do interactions between coloured surfaces and coloured light influence the process of designing surface patterns? To critically examine the results of this research, textile and fashion design undergraduate students participated in a five-day workshop during which they experimented with, and reflected upon different types of interaction between coloured surfaces and coloured light in both physical and virtual reality. The students’ designs showed that the design method provided them with an understanding of the use of coloured light in their design processes through experimentation and individual exploration, demonstrating that this approach can make a fundamental contribution to the development of coloured light usage in various design disciplines.
... Those observer's perception changes will demand a series of special characteristics to be considered during the choices of the colors during the design of a product (Heller 2013). Far beyond these aspects of ambience, the object or surface on which the color is used will also serve as a link for altering the chromatic perception between artifact and spectator, especially when understanding that shape and color are inseparable aspects (Farina et al. 2006, Gray et al. 2014. ...
Chapter
Full-text available
Colors acquire a polysemy of interpretations when observing scenarios that are sometimes difficult to understand by people outside that sociocultural environment, as these are discursive conventions specific to each culture. Thus, this research aims to explore how the symbolic assimilation of colors in fashion products, in particular in the Brazilian political and social scenario, is altered through the contexts in which they are observed. To this end, analytical research has been carried out using the triadic concepts delimited in Charles Peirce'ssemiotics. The focus is on the symbolic order of colors. Thus, connecting historical turning points where the color contextual change in the Brazilian scenario has resulted in the modification of its interpretation. Considering only the Brazilian scenario, the political-social event called Domingo Negro (Black Sunday) is discussed as an exponential event in Brazilian history in which colors were used as an element of protest. Through this analysis, it is possible to exemplify how color gains a new temporal and contextual perception. Finally, in this same line of political thought, a modern parallel is emphasized between the colors adopted by groups, accentuating the Brazilian Left and Right political dichotomy. In 2018, both parties had a strong representation in the Brazilian elections through the figure of the Workers' Party wearing the color red, and the President Jair Bolsonaro wearing the colors green and yello was their visual identity for the symbolism of patriotism, which also are the colors of the Brazilian football team.
... Participants showed a strong preference for complex symmetric figures over the other three possible combinations (i.e., simple symmetric, simple asymmetric, and complex asymmetric figures). The balance between order and complexity has also been discussed in many other research fields and application contexts, including acoustics (e.g., Fletcher, 2012), web page design (e.g., Deng & Poole, 2012;Post, Nguyen, & Hekkert, 2017), environmental aesthetics (e.g., Nasar, 1994), fashion (e.g., Gray, Schmitt, Strohminger, & Kassam, 2014), and product design (e.g., Post et al., 2016). Post, Blijlevens, and Hekkert (2016) defined the principle of unity-in-variety as "the maximization of both unity and variety, in order to achieve a balance that offers the greatest aesthetic appreciation" (p. ...
Article
Full-text available
Which stimulus and person characteristics determine aesthetic appreciation? For many centuries, philosophers and scientists have been trying to solve this complex puzzle. Through the ages, order, complexity, and the balance between order and complexity have frequently been considered as an answer to this question. The literature on the topic, however, both theoretically and empirically speaking, is rather diffuse and contradictory. In this review, we give an overview of the main theories and empirical findings relating order, complexity, and their interplay to aesthetic appreciation, focusing on research concerning the visual modality. Additionally, we propose our own view on the interplay between order and complexity, in line with the reviewed theories and findings. Besides general relations, also individual differences in order, complexity, aesthetic appreciation, and their interrelations are discussed. With this review, we hope to conceptually clarify the literature and point to new roads for investigation in the field of human aesthetics.
... Participants showed a strong preference for complex symmetric figures over the other three possible combinations (i.e., simple symmetric, simple asymmetric, and complex asymmetric figures). The balance between order and complexity has also been discussed in many other research fields and application contexts, including acoustics (e.g., Fletcher, 2012), web page design (e.g., Deng & Poole, 2012;Post, Nguyen, & Hekkert, 2017), environmental aesthetics (e.g., Nasar, 1994), fashion (e.g., Gray, Schmitt, Strohminger, & Kassam, 2014), and product design (e.g., Post et al., 2016). Post, Blijlevens, and Hekkert (2016) defined the principle of unity-in-variety as "the maximization of both unity and variety, in order to achieve a balance that offers the greatest aesthetic appreciation" (p. ...
Preprint
View this preprint on PsyArXiV: https://psyarxiv.com/gfdxb/ Which stimulus and person characteristics determine aesthetic appreciation? For many centuries, philosophers and scientists have been trying to solve this complex puzzle. Through the ages, order, complexity, and the balance between order and complexity have frequently been considered as an answer to this question. The literature on the topic, however, both theoretically and empirically speaking, is rather diffuse and contradictory. In this review, we give an overview of the main theories and empirical findings relating order, complexity, and their interplay to aesthetic appreciation, focusing on research concerning the visual modality. Additionally, we propose our own view on the interplay between order and complexity, in line with the reviewed theories and findings. Besides general relations, also individual differences in order, complexity, aesthetic appreciation, and their interrelations are discussed. With this review, we hope to conceptually clarify the literature and point to new roads for investigation in the field of human aesthetics.
Article
Full-text available
Fashion advice for clothing color is most often based on the wearer’s skin color, though hair and eye color are also considered. More saturated, warm (e.g., orange-red) colors have been found to be judged more aesthetic for White women with a relatively tanned (high melanin) skin complexion than for those with a relatively light complexion. Melanin levels in the skin, hair, and iris are correlated but the relative importance of these features for aesthetic judgments of clothing is unclear. I first replicated the preference for warm garment color for women with a darker complexion (Experiment 1 Task A). I then tested the relative importance of skin, eye, and hair color by transforming skin color between low- and high-melanin levels (Experiment 1 Task A) and by transplanting eyes between facial images (Experiment 2). Results revealed a dominant role of iris color with warmer, more saturated, and darker clothing colors being chosen for faces with darker eyes. Skin color had little influence. Even when participants were instructed to match clothing to skin color, they used eye color as a basis for clothing color choice. The results indicate that the emphasis on skin color for personal clothing color choice may be misplaced.
Article
Academic abstract: Clothing, hairstyle, makeup, and accessories influence first impressions. However, target dress is notably absent from current theories and models of person perception. We discuss three reasons for this minimal attention to dress in person perception: high theoretical complexity, incompatibility with traditional methodology, and underappreciation by the groups who have historically guided research in person perception. We propose a working model of person perception that incorporates target dress alongside target face, target body, context, and perceiver characteristics. Then, we identify four types of inferences for which perceivers rely on target dress: social categories, cognitive states, status, and aesthetics. For each of these, we review relevant work in social cognition, integrate this work with existing dress research, and propose future directions. Finally, we identify and offer solutions to the theoretical and methodological challenges accompanying the psychological study of dress. Public abstract: Why is it that people often agonize over what to wear for a job interview, a first date, or a party? The answer is simple: They understand that others' first impressions of them rely on their clothing, hairstyle, makeup, and accessories. Many people might be surprised, then, to learn that psychologists' theories about how people form first impressions of others have little to say about how people dress. This is true in part because the meaning of clothing is so complex and culturally dependent. We propose a working model of first impressions that identifies four types of information that people infer from dress: people's social identities, mental states, status, and aesthetic tastes. For each of these, we review existing research on clothing, integrate this research with related work from social psychology more broadly, and propose future directions for research.
Article
Creativity is the generation of an idea or artifact judged to be novel and high-quality by a knowledgeable social group, and is often said to be the pinnacle of intelligence. Several computational creativity systems of various designs are now being demonstrated and deployed. These myriad design possibilities raise the natural question: are there fundamental limits to creativity? Here we define a mathematical abstraction to capture key aspects of combinatorial creativity and study fundamental trade-offs between novelty and quality. The functional form of this fundamental limit resembles the capacity-cost relationship in information theory, especially when measuring novelty using Bayesian surprise—the relative entropy between the empirical distribution of an inspiration set and that set updated with the new idea or artifact. As such, we show how information geometry techniques provide insight into the limits of creativity and find that the maturity of the creative domain directly parameterizes the fundamental limit. This result is extended to the case when there is a diverse audience for creativity and when the quality function is not known but must be estimated from samples.
Article
Full-text available
Human infants, like immature members of any species, must be highly selective in sampling information from their environment to learn efficiently. Failure to be selective would waste precious computational resources on material that is already known (too simple) or unknowable (too complex). In two experiments with 7- and 8-month-olds, we measure infants' visual attention to sequences of events varying in complexity, as determined by an ideal learner model. Infants' probability of looking away was greatest on stimulus items whose complexity (negative log probability) according to the model was either very low or very high. These results suggest a principle of infant attention that may have broad applicability: infants implicitly seek to maintain intermediate rates of information absorption and avoid wasting cognitive resources on overly simple or overly complex events.
Book
Full-text available
The psychological theory of expectation that David Huron proposes in Sweet Anticipation grew out of the author's experimental efforts to understand how music evokes emotions. These efforts evolved into a general theory of expectation that will prove informative to readers interested in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology as well as those interested in music. The book describes a set of psychological mechanisms and illustrates how these mechanisms work in the case of music. All examples of notated music can be heard on the Web. Huron proposes that emotions evoked by expectation involve five functionally distinct response systems: reaction responses (which engage defensive reflexes); tension responses (where uncertainty leads to stress); prediction responses (which reward accurate prediction); imagination responses (which facilitate deferred gratification); and appraisal responses (which occur after conscious thought is engaged). For real-world events, these five response systems typically produce a complex mixture of feelings. The book identifies some of the aesthetic possibilities afforded by expectation, and shows how common musical devices (such as syncopation, cadence, meter, tonality, and climax) exploit the psychological opportunities. The theory also provides new insights into the physiological psychology of awe, laughter, and spine-tingling chills. Huron traces the psychology of expectations from the patterns of the physical/cultural world through imperfectly learned heuristics used to predict that world to the phenomenal qualia we experienced as we apprehend the world. Bradford Books imprint
Article
We introduce the term “enclothed cognition” to describe the systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer's psychological processes. We offer a potentially unifying framework to integrate past findings and capture the diverse impact that clothes can have on the wearer by proposing that enclothed cognition involves the co-occurrence of two independent factors—the symbolic meaning of the clothes and the physical experience of wearing them. As a first test of our enclothed cognition perspective, the current research explored the effects of wearing a lab coat. A pretest found that a lab coat is generally associated with attentiveness and carefulness. We therefore predicted that wearing a lab coat would increase performance on attention-related tasks. In Experiment 1, physically wearing a lab coat increased selective attention compared to not wearing a lab coat. In Experiments 2 and 3, wearing a lab coat described as a doctor's coat increased sustained attention compared to wearing a lab coat described as a painter's coat, and compared to simply seeing or even identifying with a lab coat described as a doctor's coat. Thus, the current research suggests a basic principle of enclothed cognition—it depends on both the symbolic meaning and the physical experience of wearing the clothes.
Article
Mfost of social psychology's theories of the self fail to take into account the significance of social identification in the definition of self. Social identities are self-definitions that are more inclusive than the individuated self-concept of most American psychology. A model of optimal distinctiveness is proposed in which social identity is viewed as a reconciliation of opposing needs for assimilation and differentiation from others. According to this model, individuals avoid self-construals that are either too personalized or too inclusive and instead define themselves in terms of distinctive category memberships. Social identity and group loyalty are hypothesized to be strongest for those self-categorizations that simultaneously provide for a sense of belonging and a sense of distinctiveness. Results from an initial laboratory experiment support the prediction that depersonalization and group size interact as determinants of the strength of social identification.
Article
Scientists and philosophers have searched for centuries for a parsimonious answer to the question of what constitutes beauty. We approached this problem from both an evolutionary and information-processing rationale and predicted that faces representing the average value of the population would be consistently judged as attractive. To evaluate this hypothesis, we digitized samples of male and female faces, mathematically averaged them, and had adults judge the attractiveness of both the individual faces and the computer-generated composite images. Both male (three samples) and female (three samples) composite faces were judged as more attractive than almost all the individual faces comprising the composites. A strong linear trend also revealed that the composite faces became more attractive as more faces were entered. These data showing that attractive faces are only average are consistent with evolutionary pressures that favor characteristics close to the mean of the population and with cognitive processes that favor prototypical category members.
Article
This research investigated the extent to which an applicant's clothing influenced interviewer's perceptions of management characteristics and decisions to hire women for management positions. One hundred nine respondents (from marketing and banking) viewed color videotapes of four women applicants interviewing for a management position. The applicants were wearing one of four experimental costumes which differed in masculinity. The respondents rated each applicant on five management characteristics and made hiring recommendations for each applicant. Clothing masculinity was significant in predicting the perception of all the management characteristics examined. Applicants were perceived as more forceful, aggressive and so on when wearing more masculine clothing. Applicants also received more favorable hiring recommendations when wearing more masculine clothing. The mediating effect of the respondent's gender and occupation on perception of management characteristics and hiring decisions was not significant. The findings are discussed from an integrated conceptual framework.