“Kneweth one who makes these notes . . .”: Personality, individual differences, and liking of nouveau roman and existentialist literature and film.

Abstract

Previous studies suggest that personality and individual difference traits are associated with aesthetic preferences, but have infrequently examined associations within specific genres or across media domains. We examined associations between the Big Five personality traits with preferences (i.e., liking) for two non-conventional genres of film and literature, namely nouveau roman and existentialism, in samples of 548 non-experts and 95 genre experts from Austria. Path analyses indicated that Openness to Experience (positively) and Conscientiousness (negatively) were significantly associated with greater liking of stimuli across genres and media domains, after considering the effects of additional, relevant variables (aesthetic expertise and behaviours, social status, and the motive for sensory pleasure). Path models were stable across non-experts and experts, although the strength of the relationships between Openness and liking was stronger for nouveau roman stimuli.Additional analyses indicated that experts had significantly greater liking for stimuli across both genres than non-experts. These results may have implications for the promotion of nonconventional artworks to wider audiences.

How Individual States and Traits Predict Aesthetic Appreciation of Haiku Poetry

“…Therefore, individuals with high nostalgia-proneness, namely those who often reminisce about or long for their past, might have felt closer to and familiar with the haiku, and thus found them more beautiful. In terms of openness to experience, this study is inconsistent with previous studies involving paintings (e.g., Rosenbluh et al, 1972), movies, and literature (e.g., Tran et al, 2019). This may be because haiku has a long history and is included in school curricula; thus, the participants might not have found haiku to be novel.…”

“…In contrast, the effect of personality traits on aesthetic appreciation of artworks has been investigated predominantly using paintings and music as stimuli. For example, aesthetic appreciation is related to individual differences in the Big Five personality traits (Rosenbluh et al, 1972;Tran et al, 2019), ambiguity tolerance (Child & Chapman, 1973;Swami et al, 2010), and trait empathy . While a small number of studies have considered poetry, Sundararajan (2004) showed that individual traits, such as autonomy, the nonconformist dimension of openness, and intrinsic motivation, lead to creativity as one aspect of aesthetic experience.…”