Must interesting things be pleasant? A test of competing appraisal structures.

Turner, Samuel A.; Silvia, Paul J.

doi:10.1037/1528-3542.6.4.670

Cited by 159 publications

(167 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…These scales measured feelings of interest (interesting-uninteresting, boring-exciting) and confusion (confusing-clear, perplexingobvious) and the appraisals of novelty-complexity (simple-complex, unfamiliar -familiar, common-unusual) and comprehensibility (comprehensible-incomprehensible, easy to understand-hard to understand). Similar items have been used in past research (see Silvia, 2005a;Turner & Silvia, 2006).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confusion and interest: The role of knowledge emotions in aesthetic experience.

Silvia¹

2010

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

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Abstract:What makes something confusing? Confusion is a common response to challenging, abstract, and complex works, but it has received little attention in psychology. Based on appraisal theories of emotion, I suggest that confusion and interest have different positions in a two-dimensional appraisal space: interesting things stem from appraisals of high novelty and high comprehensibility, and confusing things stem from appraisals of high novelty and low comprehensibility. Two studies-a multilevel correlational study and an experiment that Unfortunately, confusion is a typical response to the arts. Given the beleaguered state of contemporary art education, many people lack the training and knowledge needed to understand challenging and abstract works, such

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confusion and interest: The role of knowledge emotions in aesthetic experience.

Silvia¹

2010

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

Self Cite

197

180

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“…In particular, novelty appraisal and high coping potential appraisal does not predict the experience of liking (Ellsworth & Smith, 1988;2005b;Turner & Silvia, 2006). Furthermore, the appraisal structure of interest means that interest is not necessarily elicited by pleasant stimuli.…”

Section: Appraisal Structure and Motivational Functions Under Appraimentioning

confidence: 87%

“…Correspondingly, research has shown that novelty-complexity appraisal may evoke the emotion of interest (Silvia, 2005a(Silvia, , 2005b(Silvia, , 2008a(Silvia, , 2013Silvia, Henson, & Templin, 2009;Turner & Silvia, 2006). Furthermore, novelty-complexity appraisal can also predict the experience of interest beyond individual differences such as curiosity and openness to experience (Silvia, 2005b(Silvia, , 2008a.…”

Section: Emotional Responses To Perceived Design Newnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, the appraisal structure of interest means that interest is not necessarily elicited by pleasant stimuli. In fact, Turner and Silvia (2006) showed that novel, disturbing paintings evoke greater interest but lower liking. In their research, the experience of interest was positively associated with novelty appraisal, whereas liking had a negative association with novelty appraisal.…”

Section: Appraisal Structure and Motivational Functions Under Appraimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Much research has focused on people's affective motivation to approach familiarity but very little research has examined the opposing affective motivation to approach novelty. Interest is an emotion that motivates people's curiosity to approach novel, complex, but not necessarily pleasant stimuli (Litman 2008;Litman & Silvia, 2006;Loewenstein, 1994;Silvia, 2005aSilvia, , 2005bSilvia, , 2006Silvia, , 2008bTurner & Silvia, 2006). Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to shed light on the relevance of interest to our understanding of consumer psychology and behavior.…”

Section: Chapter 1: General Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The neglected emotion of interest and its relevance to consumer psychology

Sung¹

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A main goal of marketing is to evoke a sense of familiarity that enhance consumers' psychological and behavioural responses. Yet, little is known about why consumers sometimes respond negatively toward familiarity and respond positively toward novelty. Specifically, the question of how affective motivation drives consumers to favor novelty is important in achieving enhanced marketing. Interest or curiosity is an emotion related to a strong approach motivation and exploratory behavior toward novelty. This thesis explores the relevance and implications of interest to consumer psychology and behavior. The investigation is grounded in emotion differentiation, appraisal theories of interest, and a functional account of emotion. It draws from literature on the exposure effect, differentiation of positive emotions, the emotion of interest, metacognitive experience of fluency, new product and innovation management, and advertising.The thesis begins with a review of the relevant literature that shows how consumers tend to paradoxically favor both familiarity and novelty (Chapter 1). In this conceptual review, I propose that the differentiation between liking and interest can explain this previously unresolved paradox.Specifically, familiarity appears to evoke liking, whereas novelty elicits interest. This chapter contributes to our understanding of how and why consumers gravitate toward novelty by providing an explanation: consumers' have dualistic tendency to favor familiarity and novelty simultaneously.The remaining chapters present three streams of research which show that consumers tend to favor novelty because it generates the emotion of interest. Chapter 2 contributes to the innovation management literature by showing that consumers' subjective perceptions of novelty toward a product design, instead of the deviation of design itself, can enhance product evaluation and behavior toward the product. Chapter 3 contributes to the advertising literature by applying appraisal theories to the elicitation of consumer interest and demonstrates that the simple advertising cue of novelty can evoke the emotion of interest. Chapter 4 contributes to the literature on consumer research by showing that disfluency (i.e., metacognitive difficulty) can serve as a cue for novelty -one that evokes interest and enhances product evaluation. This provides a potential explanation to the conflicting findings between the positive effects of fluency (through familiarity) and disfluency (through novelty) on product evaluation.Taken together, this set of studies is the first to demonstrate the relevance and implication of interest to consumer psychology and behavior. I show that product design can benefit from considering the appraisal structure of interest and, specifically, it accounts for consumers' subjective perception and affective response toward design newness. I also find that a consumer's novelty appraisal is a significant determinant of perceived interestingness of an advertisement and this can be evoked by simple advertising ...

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Revisiting (dis)fluency: Metacognitive difficulty as a novelty cue that evokes feeling‐of‐interest

Sung

Vanman

Hartley

2022

Psychology and Marketing

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Contrary to conventional belief and the existing literature, recent research has shown that difficult-to-read fonts on marketing communications may evoke perceptual disfluency and enhance consumer evaluation toward unique, complex, or security-related products.However, no research has examined the psychological mechanism that underlies the positive effects of perceptual disfluency. The current research presents five experiments to address this study gap. Specifically, Studies 1 and 2 provide empirical evidence that perceptual disfluency may lead to perceived novelty and in turn evoke the feeling-ofinterest, perceived innovativeness, and intention to try a product. Studies 3 and 4 replicate these findings and show that such an indirect effect of perceptual disfluency is mitigated by the presence of salient novelty cues and prior product knowledge, providing further support for the hypothesized disfluency-novelty-interest relationship. Study 5 extended these findings by showing that digital ad banners with disfluent text may enhance click-throughs in a natural viewing task of a news website. The current findings empirically demonstrate a mechanism that not only underlies the positive effects of perceptual disfluency but also aligns with the fluency-familiarity-liking relationship found in the existing literature.

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Must interesting things be pleasant? A test of competing appraisal structures.

Cited by 159 publications

References 32 publications

Confusion and interest: The role of knowledge emotions in aesthetic experience.

Confusion and interest: The role of knowledge emotions in aesthetic experience.

The neglected emotion of interest and its relevance to consumer psychology

Revisiting (dis)fluency: Metacognitive difficulty as a novelty cue that evokes feeling‐of‐interest

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