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.

How we perceptually organize a visual stimulus depends not only on the stimulus itself, but also on the temporal and spatial context in which the stimulus is presented and on the individual processing the stimulus and context. Earlier research found both attractive and repulsive context effects in perception: tendencies to organize visual input similarly to preceding context stimuli (i.e., hysteresis, attraction) co-exist with tendencies that repel the current percept from the organization that is most dominant in these contextual stimuli (i.e., adaptation, repulsion). These processes have been studied mostly on a group level (e.g., Schwiedrzik et al., 2014). Using a Bayesian hierarchical model comparison approach, the present study ( N = 75) investigated whether consistent individual differences exist in these attractive and repulsive temporal context effects, with multistable dot lattices as stimuli. In addition, the temporal stability of these individual differences in context effects was investigated, and it was studied how the strength of these effects related to the strength of individual biases for absolute orientations. The results demonstrate that large individual differences in the size of attractive and repulsive context effects exist. Furthermore, these individual differences are highly consistent across timepoints (one to two weeks apart). Although almost everyone showed both effects in the expected direction, not every single individual did. In sum, the study reveals differences in how individuals combine previous input and experience with current input in their perception, and more generally, this teaches us that different individuals can perceive identical stimuli differently, even within a similar context.

Starting pointImages of a set of objects (or parts of objects) organized in an orderly way Popular online (e.g., blog Things Organized Neatly ) Main question: Which factors are associated with aesthetic preferences for specific neatly organized compositions?Complexity: aspects related to the quantity and variety of information in a stimulus Order: aspects related to the structure and organization in a stimulus Relation order and complexity: antagonistic and complementary (Arnheim, 1966) Order, complexity, and neatly organized compositions Procedure "Please click on the image you prefer" Personality questionnaires • Big Five Inventory (BFI) • Personal Need for Structure (PNS)

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.

We tested the prediction, derived from the hubris hypothesis, that bragging might serve as a verbal provocation and thus enhance aggression. Experiments 1 and 2 were vignette studies where participants could express hypothetical aggression; Experiment 3 was an actual decision task where participants could make aggressive and/or prosocial choices. Observers disliked an explicit braggart (who claimed to be "better than others") or a competence braggart as compared with an implicit braggart (who claimed to be "good") or a warmth braggart, respectively. Showing that explicit and competence bragging function as verbal provocations, observers responded more aggressively to the explicit and competence braggart than to the implicit and warmth braggart, respectively. They did so because they inferred that an explicit and a competence braggart viewed other people and them negatively, and therefore disliked the braggart. Rather than praising the self, braggarts are sometimes viewed as insulting others.