The mind in the object—Psychological valuation of materialized human expression.

Abstract

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 144(4) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (see record 2015-33206-002). In the article the labels on the X-axis of Figure 1 "Remove Variance" and "Preserve Variance" should be switched.] Symbolic material objects such as art or certain artifacts (e.g., fine pottery, jewelry) share one common element: The combination of generating an expression, and the materialization of this expression in the object. This explains why people place a much greater value on handmade over machine-made objects, and originals over duplicates. We show that this mechanism occurs when a material object's symbolic property is salient and when the creator (artist or craftsman) is perceived to have agency control over the 1-to-1 materialized expression in the object. Coactivation of these 2 factors causes the object to be perceived as having high value because it is seen as the embodied representation of the creator's unique personal expression. In 6 experiments, subjects rated objects in various object categories, which varied on the type of object property (symbolic, functional, aesthetic), the production procedure (handmade, machine-made, analog, digital) and the origin of the symbolic information (person or software). The studies showed that the proposed mechanism applies to symbolic, but not to functional or aesthetic material objects. Furthermore, they show that this specific form of symbolic object valuation could not be explained by various other related psychological theories (e.g., uniqueness, scarcity, physical touching, creative performance). Our research provides a universal framework that identifies a core mechanism for explaining judgments of value for one of our most uniquely human symbolic object categories.

Fashion and art cycles are driven by counter-dominance signals of elite competition: quantitative evidence from music styles

“…Of all species, only modern homo sapiens has evolved the ability to use complex symbolic behavior to organize and coordinate large anonymous societies [1,2,3].…”

Folk Theories of Artifact Creation: How Intuitions About Human Labor Influence the Value of Artifacts

“…In psychological and consumer research, the perceived value of artifacts has been measured in diverse ways, including general value (high/low value in isolation, or high/low value relative to a duplicate; for example, Kreuzbauer et al, 2015 ), monetary value (estimated price, willingness to pay, lottery simulations; for example, Fuchs et al, 2015 ; Job et al, 2017 ; Newman & Bloom, 2012 ; Smith et al, 2016 ), perceived quality (high/low overall quality; for example, Job et al, 2017 ), personal value (whether the person likes the object, or wants to buy, consume, touch, own, or show the object to others; for example, Job et al, 2017 ; Stavrova et al, 2016 ), distress at the prospect of the object being destroyed (e.g., Job et al, 2017 ), and perceived value to society (whether the object should be kept in a museum, put in a time capsule, or receive an award; for example, Valsesia et al, 2015 ). The effect of creation history on artifact evaluation is likely to depend on the kind of evaluation.…”

“…The lay concept of art has received the most attention from researchers in social and cognitive psychology, encompassing several other psychological phenomena, such as intention-based contagion ( Stavrova et al, 2016 ), the valuation of materialized human expression ( Kreuzbauer et al, 2015 ), the valuation placed on individual effort in art ( Smith & Newman, 2014 ), viewing artworks as part of the “extended self” ( Newman & Bloom, 2012 ; Newman et al, 2014 ), the valuation of creative control ( Valsesia et al, 2015 ), and temporal contagion ( Smith et al, 2016 ). There is evidence of both mental and physical property transmission in art; observers see the visual form of artwork as representing the internal mental states of the artist and also see the individual artifact as containing physical properties transferred from the artist (e.g., the “individual essence” of the artist; Newman et al, 2014 ).…”

“…In the previous sections, we have focused on the role of folk theories of artifact creation in the valuation of artifacts. However, we recognize that these are not the only source of value for artifacts (see also Kreuzbauer et al, 2015 ; Smith & Newman, 2014 ), and that the salience of the creation history of an artifact is related to other factors that contribute to perceived value, such as perceived quality, scarcity, and association with an identified individual. Nonetheless, we believe that the folk theory framework can help understand value discrepancies between objects that would ostensibly share these other factors.…”

“…This has largely focused on the psychological implications of materialism and material possessions, namely, human interaction with material artifacts once they are created and possessed (e.g., Dittmar, 1992b ; Gosling et al, 2002 ; Kahneman et al, 1990 ). Yet, recent research has begun to show that the creation of material artifacts—how a material artifact is conceived and manufactured—can play a significant role in the human–artifact relation, including how we perceive (e.g., Bullot & Reber, 2013 ; Gelman, 2013 ; Newman et al, 2014 ), cognize (e.g., Bloom, 1996 ; Gelman & Bloom, 2000 ; Kelemen & Carey, 2007 ), and interact with material artifacts (e.g., Job et al, 2017 ; Kreuzbauer et al, 2015 ; Smith et al, 2016 ). Although these insights have significant implications for sustainable consumption and production, as we will explicate below, this body of knowledge is scattered across different subfields of psychology and lacks integration.…”