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"Aha"ptics: Enjoying an Aesthetic Aha During Haptic Exploration
Claudia Muth1, Sabine Ebert2, Slobodan Marković3
1Department of General Psychology and Methodology, University of Bamberg, Germany; Forschungsgruppe EPÆG (Ergonomics, Psychological Æsthetics, Gestalt), Bamberg, Germany.
Perception
|December 21, 2018
Summary
Discovering structure through touch, or haptic exploration, enhances appreciation. This Aesthetic Aha effect in the haptic domain shows that insight and material feel predict pleasingness, with complexity boosting liking.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Haptics
- Aesthetics
Background:
- Perceptual insight, the "Aesthetic Aha" effect, enhances appreciation of visual objects.
- This study investigates if the Aesthetic Aha effect transfers to the haptic domain.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine the Aesthetic Aha paradigm in haptic exploration.
- To understand how insight, material feel, complexity, and personality influence haptic aesthetic judgments.
- To compare haptic and visual aesthetic evaluations.
Main Methods:
- Participants engaged in think-aloud haptic exploration of tactile panels.
- Evaluations included liking, pleasingness, complexity, and interestingness for both haptic and visual (photograph) stimuli.
- Personality traits and exploration strategies were assessed.
Main Results:
- Haptic pleasingness was predicted by insight strength and material feel.
- Higher complexity increased liking.
- Pleasingness and interest were negatively correlated but jointly predicted liking.
- Visual and haptic evaluations correlated significantly.
- Complexity correlated more with interest than liking in both modalities.
Conclusions:
- The Aesthetic Aha effect is transferable to the haptic domain, with potential differences in hedonic quality, particularly the relevance of pleasingness.
- Revealing structure haptically enhances positive affect and interest, benefiting from increased complexity.
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