Transcultural Similarity in Personal Significance of Esthetic Interests

Abstract

A measure of esthetic interest in visual art-tendency to prefer art which experts consider esthetically better-was developed in the United States, but showed high internal consistency in Greece as well. Measures of self-characterizations correlated with esthetic interest, and of active versus passive preferences in food and drink, originally developed in the United States, also showed internal consistency in Greece. The correlations among these measures found in the United States, moreover, were substantially replicated in Greece. The personal significance of esthetic interests is thus shown to have marked transcultural stability. In both countries, esthetic interest is positively related to liking for autonomy, variety, and challenge.

Creativity and Cross‐cultural Variation

“…Irvin Child and his associates brought photographs of famous Western paintings to Japan, Pakistan, Greece; Egypt, and other field settings (Anwar and Child 1972; Ford et al 1966;Haritos-Fatouros and Child 1977;Iwao and Child 1966). Subjects had to choose the painting that they 'liked better' when presented with two pieces of work.…”

A Comparison of Expert and Nonexpert Raters Using the Consensual Assessment Technique

“…This issue has been explored for nearly a century under the name aesthetic judgment (Cattell, Glascock, & Washburn, 1918). Many past investigations have found that expert-level judges consistently agree and have high interjudge reliabilities when judging artistic works (e.g., Child, 1962), even across different cultures (e.g., Child & Iwao, 1968;Haritos-Fatouros & Child, 1977;Rostan, Pariser, & Gruber, 2002). Some very initial work has been conducted on comparing novice and expert judgments.…”

Adaptive Regression of Two Types

“…One measure was an art preference test developed by Child and extensively demonstrated to have construct validity (Anwar & Child, 1972;Child, 1965;Child & Iwao, 1968;Cooperman & Child, 1969;Haritos-Fatouros & Child, 1977). The Child Art Preference test consists of projecting a series of pairs of slides of works of art and asking subjects which work they prefer in each pair.…”