The Tale of Flipping Beauty: How Processing Fluency and Categorization Shape our Preferences

• In Event: 2-108 - TAD Talks on Interdisciplinary Research

Integrative Statement

Who's the fairest of them all? In this talk I’ll argue that our mind’s answer to this question emerges via interaction of processing fluency (effort) and categorization. I’ll start with a classic effect – “beauty-in-averages” (BIA) – where “blended” or “composite” stimuli are quite appealing. This effect occurs in children and adults with a variety of natural and artificial objects. Some think the BIA results from koinophilia – a biological tendency to avoid unusual or deviant features. However, I will argue that the BIA reflects hedonic reactions to greater fluency (efficiency) with which average stimuli are usually processed. More interestingly, I will also show that we can reverse this preference with manipulations that change how efficiently the “averages” are processed. Specifically, blends can be fluent and liked, but also disfluent and disliked. It all depends on the perceiver’s expertise with exemplars and categories, and also on how the perceiver constructs the task-relevant category. I will show examples of this flexibility across a variety of stimuli, including social categories of gender and races. In short, I will argue that social evaluations are elastic and grounded in “processing dynamics” of the beholder.

Authors

• Sarah Marie Tashjian, University of California, Los Angeles
  Introducer

• Piotr Winkielman, University of California, San Diego
  Speaker