Jim Davies: Publications

Davies, J. & McManus, M. (2014). How our desire for social information affects tastes in paintings and belief systems. In Kozbelt, A. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Biennial Congress of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics, (153—158). (IAEA-14) New York, NY: International Association of Empirical Aesthetics.

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Most paintings depict people, usually very few people
There are more paintings of people than of animals
We estimate intelligence in aliens the same way we do with human beings
We find art and belief systems compelling for some of the same reasons. This paper shows two examples of this.

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BibTex Entry:

@InProceedings{DaviesMcmanus2014,
  author = 	 {Davies, Jim and McManus, Meaghan},
  title = 	 {How our desire for social information affects tastes in paintings and belief systems},
  booktitle = 	 {Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Biennial Congress of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics},
  pages = 	 {153--158},
  year = 	 {2014},
  editor = 	 {Kozbelt, A.},
  address = 	 {New York, NY},
  publisher = {International Association of Empirical Aesthetics}
}

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Abstract

Psychology has found a many explanations for what makes art compelling. People can also find that belief systems, such as religions or health ideas, resonate with them. We know that how much people feel positive about ideas influences their actual endorsement of those ideas. We show that the depiction of human beings positively affects both art and belief. Experiment 1 shows that in paintings around the world, depictions of people dominate. Experiment 2 shows that for alien abduction theory, the look of the bald “grey” alien has features that we use to indicate intelligence in human beings: being tall, and having a small nose. This supports the theory that we find art and belief systems compelling for the same reasons. Back to Jim Davies's list of publications.

JimDavies ( jim@jimdavies.org )