The Magic of Storytelling: How Curiosity and Aesthetic Preferences Work

Abstract

Why do we love stories? That this is not an idle question is shown by the fact that we spend an enormous amount of time in our lives following stories: telling and listening to them; reading them; watching them on television or in films or on stage. Despite their recurrent similarity and even predictability, we continue to enjoy them. The paper brings to bear on this question two different strands of current literature in experimental psychology: the literature on aesthetic preferences, and the literature on curiosity and interest. The paper discusses how, in the case of storytelling in particular, though also of creative activities in general, there are two types of curiosity at work: explorative curiosity -associated with investigating new ideas for the simple joy of it and regardless of source -and specific curiosity, corresponding to focused exploration and aimed at solving problems for which the accuracy and relevance of information is of importance. In both cases curiosity is felt as an intensely pleasant experience, which is affected not only by external, but also by the internal stimuli of novelty and challenge. But how does interest/curiosity solidify into preferences that have stability enough to guarantee guidance yet sufficient flexibility to allow for change? The answer explored here highlights the distinction between comfort goods and activities and creative goods and activities. The latter, which allow for complexity, variety and multiplicity of dimensions have a transformative power that allows also for sustained stimulation and interest. The broader aim is to analyze the "behavior" of individual preferences -how they form, how they stabilize, how they change -in the consumption not only of art, the usual focus in discussion of aesthetic preferences, but also of all those goods and activities that can be called creative. IntroductionIn 1944 Edmund Wilson published an article in The New Yorker entitled "Why do people read detective stories?" In answering his own question Wilson charged the mystery genre with being dull, badly written, and utterly formulaic, a "department of imaginative writing" that was "completely dead" (p. 84). To his great surprise, readers rebelled. He received so many passionate letters in defense of mystery stories and authors -more than those he had received in answer to his famous criticisms of the Soviet Union -that he went back to the topic in two articles that appeared in the first two months of the following year. By then, he had done his homework and read many of the contemporary writers his readers had suggested. But he was unrepentant. Reading detective stories, he concluded, "is simply a kind of vice that, for silliness and minor harmfulness, ranks somewhere between crossword puzzles and smoking " (1945a: 65). 1 Arthur Krystal, in a recent issue of the same magazine (May 2012), revisited the same issues. In "Easy writers. Guilty pleasures without guilt," Krystal gives us an account of Wilson's position as well as a current follow-up. The debate between l...

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