Age and Preference for Complexity among Manifestly Creative Women

Crosson, Carrie W.; Robertson‐Tchabo, Elizabeth A.

doi:10.1159/000272878

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Our results conform to this finding and suggest that older participants were more likely to prefer simpler songs whereas the younger participants were more likely to prefer more complex songs. In the visual domain, such a relationship has been suggested earlier (Munsinger et al, 1964; Alpaugh and Birren, 1977; Crosson and Robertson-Tchabo, 1983; Güçlütürk et al, 2016). In the auditory domain, an important role of age in music preferences has been established (Bonneville-Roussy et al, 2013, 2017), however these investigations were more focused on music genres rather than the complexity dimension of music.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 52%

Decomposing Complexity Preferences for Music

Güçlütürk

Lier

2019

Front. Psychol.

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Recently, we demonstrated complexity as a major factor for explaining individual differences in visual preferences for abstract digital art. We have shown that participants could best be separated into two groups based on their liking ratings for abstract digital art comprising geometric patterns: one group with a preference for complex visual patterns and another group with a preference for simple visual patterns. In the present study, building up on these results, we extended our investigations for complexity preferences from highly controlled visual stimuli to ecologically valid stimuli in the auditory modality. Similar to visual preferences, we showed that music preferences are highly influenced by stimulus complexity. We demonstrated this by clustering a large number of participants based on their liking ratings for song excerpts from various musical genres. Our results show that, based on their liking ratings, participants can best be separated into two groups: one group with a preference for more complex songs and another group with a preference for simpler songs. Finally, we considered various demographic and personal characteristics to explore differences between the groups, and reported that at least for the current data set age and gender to be significant factors separating the two groups.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 52%

Decomposing Complexity Preferences for Music

Güçlütürk

Lier

2019

Front. Psychol.

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“…Along with creativity and artistic tendencies, a person’s age has been shown to affect their preference for complexity. Particularly, older individuals have been shown to prefer simpler visual stimuli ( Munsinger et al, 1964 ; Alpaugh and Birren, 1977 ; Crosson and Robertson-Tchabo, 1983 ). In the present study, although the average age of Cluster 1 ( M = 25.1, SD = 3.3) was higher than that of Cluster 2 ( M = 22.7, SD = 3.5), this difference was very small and not significant (Student’s t -test, p = 0.082).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although, we agree that the various complexity dimensions utilized in these studies could have a major effect on the divergence of the results, an additional factor contributing to this divergence could be the individual differences in aesthetic preferences of the participants. Large individual differences among complexity preferences of participants have been frequently observed even on a single study level ( Vitz, 1966 ; Crosson and Robertson-Tchabo, 1983 ; Aks and Sprott, 1996 ; Jacobsen and Höfel, 2002 ). For instance, Jacobsen and Höfel (2002) found that, while the group-level analysis indicated a preference for higher levels of complexity, their sample of participants also included individuals who displayed exactly the opposite complexity preference patterns.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Liking versus Complexity: Decomposing the Inverted U-curve

Güçlütürk

Jacobs

Lier

2016

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

103

112

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The relationship between liking and stimulus complexity is commonly reported to follow an inverted U-curve. However, large individual differences among complexity preferences of participants have frequently been observed since the earliest studies on the topic. The common use of across-participant analysis methods that ignore these large individual differences in aesthetic preferences gives an impression of high agreement between individuals. In this study, we collected ratings of liking and perceived complexity from 30 participants for a set of digitally generated grayscale images. In addition, we calculated an objective measure of complexity for each image. Our results reveal that the inverted U-curve relationship between liking and stimulus complexity comes about as the combination of different individual liking functions. Specifically, after automatically clustering the participants based on their liking ratings, we determined that one group of participants in our sample had increasingly lower liking ratings for increasingly more complex stimuli, while a second group of participants had increasingly higher liking ratings for increasingly more complex stimuli. Based on our findings, we call for a focus on the individual differences in aesthetic preferences, adoption of alternative analysis methods that would account for these differences and a re-evaluation of established rules of human aesthetic preferences.

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“…He maintains that creativity itself does not decline, rather the underlying qualities of the creative process, a s well as individual styles of thinking, evolve and change into new forms of creativity. The important role experience plays is seen further in Crosson et al's ( 1984) suggestion that creativity in later life is dominated by an integration of diverse experiences and ideas aided by a holistic view that encompasses previously contradictory and unrelated thoughts and events. Similarly, CREATlVlN OVER UllSDOM AS MATUflE THINKING Alpaugh et al (1982) demonstrated that older persons may rely more on experience than on present divergent thinking abilities when cogitating creativity.…”

Section: Ive-smn Look?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Further, perhaps flexibility and fluency exhibit age-related declines because they claim less importance in the cognitive prioritiek of older subjects, or because they embody different forms in mature creative thinking and acting. It is interesting that when creativity is seen a s a multidimensional process that can change and develop over the life-span the traditional age-related declines are either not found, or if detected are relatively slight, and start their descent much later and more gradually than traditionally supposed (Alpaugh et al, 1982;Crosson et al, 1984;Komulainen, 1985). Furthermore, these declines are not uniformly present in and do not apply to all of the cognitive components thought to comprise creativity.…”

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confidence: 99%

Qualitative Changes in Creativity in the Second Half of life: A Life‐Span Developmental Perspective

Sasser-Coen

1993

Journal of Creative Behavior

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Research on the relationship between creativity and age has been based on two seemingly incompatible sets of assumptions. The deficit approach maintains and has demonstrated that creative productivity and age have a linear relationship—that is, creativity declines over the life‐span. The alternate approach, upon which the present paper is founded, maintains that creative productivity and creative ability are not identical. Further, this life‐span developmental approach posits that supposed declines in creativity actually may reflect qualitative changes in the underlying creative process. Thus, different stages of the life‐span are characterized by different kinds of creativity. Empirical and theoretical literature on wisdom and mature forms of thinking will be used to further answer the central questions of this paper: what might creativity in the second half of life look like?

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Age and Preference for Complexity among Manifestly Creative Women

Cited by 12 publications

References 5 publications

Decomposing Complexity Preferences for Music

Decomposing Complexity Preferences for Music

Liking versus Complexity: Decomposing the Inverted U-curve

Qualitative Changes in Creativity in the Second Half of life: A Life‐Span Developmental Perspective

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