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The Psychological Aesthetics of
Narrative Forms
CHRISTY MOYNIHAN AND ALBERT MEHRABIAN
The study of aesthetic experience may be approached from a number of
viewpoints. A work of art is composed of a myriad of elements, anyone of
which may be examined with respect to its impact on aesthetic preference. A painting may be analyzed in terms of color, form, or subject
matter: a story or novel in terms of style, plot, theme, or point of view; a
song in terms of melody, rhythm, or harmonal structure, and so forth.
The multiplicity of elements in a work of art, as well as the diversity
among different art forms, would seem to make it difficult to identify
general principles underlying all aesthetic experience. Berlyne (1971,
1974), however, has constructed a general theory of psychological aesthetics which conceptualizes all aesthetic experience, whether in response to
visual art, literature, or music, as a unitary phenomenon. This theory is
based not on the kinds of elements in a work, but on the degree of
interdependence among these elements.
THE INVERTED- U HYPOTHESIS
Berlyne contends that aesthetic pleasure or preference is primarily a
response to the degree of structure or complexity in the work of art. He
notes that aestheticians have often declared aesthetic pleasure to be the
result of the balance or interplay between two opposing sets of variables:
those, such as variety, novelty, and multiplicity, which reduce structure
and increase complexity, and those, such as harmony, balance, or unity,
which are attributes of ordered structure. Berlyne conceives of all these
CHRISTY MOYNIHAN AND ALBERT MEHRABIAN • Department of Psychology, University of
California, Los Angeles, California 90024.
H. I. Day (ed.), Advances in Intrinsic Motivation and Aesthetics
© Plenum Press, New York 1981
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diverse variables as belonging to a single dimension of structural complexity, ranging from the extremely simple, or ordered, to the extremely
complex, or unordered. Berlyne further defines these variables in terms
of information theory (see Attneave, 1959; Cherry, 1966; Garner, 1962):
complexity implies high uncertainty, whereas order indicates redundancy, with uncertainty and redundancy constituting opposite ends of
the same continuum.
Complexity or uncertainty affects aesthetic pleasure through its effects on arousal. Basing his argument on physiological evidence concerning the relationships among exploratory drive, arousal, and pleasure,
Berlyne (1960, 1971) hypothesized that pleasure is curvilinearly related to
arousal, such that when arousal is low, stimuli which increase arousal are
pleasurable. When arousal is high, however, stimuli which decrease
arousal are pleasurable. Complex stimuli are arousal-heightening,
whereas structured stimuli are arousal-moderating. Thus, pleasure is
greatest at intermediate levels of arousal or complexity.
The relationships among arousal, uncertainty, and various measures
of preference have been examined in studies concerned with diverse
behaviors and situations. The hypothesized relationship between uncertainty level and arousal has received strong empirical support (Berlyne,
1960; deCharms, 1968; Fiske & Maddi, 1961). The hypothesized
inverted-U relationship between uncertainty level, whether experimentally manipulated or subjectively rated, and measures indicative of pleasure or "hedonic value" (i.e., verbally expressed preference, evaluative
judgments, or ratings of pleasingness and pleasure) has also been found
in a number of studies (Berlyne, 1974; Crozier, 1974; Kammann, 1966;
Munsinger and Kessen, 1964; Normore, 1974; Vitz, 1966a,b).
In other studies using the same or similar measures, however, pleasure was found to be either a monotonically increasing or a monotonically
decreasing function of uncertainty level (Osborne & Farley, 1970; Walker,
1970). When other behaviors and other types of verbal ratings are
examined, the results are even more complex. Rather than showing the
inverted-U relationship that would be expected if these behaviors were
direct functions of pleasure, the judged interestingness of the object,
exploratory time (i.e., time spent looking at the object), and exploratory
choice (i.e., choice of one object over another for further viewing) are
almost always positively related to uncertainty level (Cantor, Cantor, &
Ditrichs, 1963; Leckart and Bakan, 1965; Wohlwill, 1968). Although these
variables tend to have strong relationships with uncertainty, they are also
correlated with hedonic value, although to a lesser degree (Berlyne, 1974;
Berlyne & Ogilvie, 1974; Crozier, 1974; Hare, 1974).
Studies which find a linear rather than an inverted-U relationship
between hedonic value and uncertainty do not necessarily contradict