Aesthetic Preference for Nonredundant Complexity: Key to Creativity

Abstract

The basic principle of all biological and social, and some physical processes is increase of interactive heterogeneity, which evolutionarily raises the sophistication level of intraspecific and interspecific systems. Primates, including humans, and other species of animals such as elephants, are known to create multicolor pictorial patterns on a canvas, holding a painting brush in a hand, or in the case of elephants, wrapping the long "nose" around a painting brush. Therefore the pattern creation has a long evolutionary history. Humans and monkeys branched off 6 or 7 million years ago. Humans and elephants much earlier. Another important consideration is the method of mate selection by females. Females prefer "minority" males. If Type A males and Type B males are mixed, females prefer "minority" males instead of "supernormal" males. The females' preference for "minority" males leads to intraspecific heterogenization, but if females preferred "supernormal" males, it would lead to intraspecific homogenization. There is heterogeneity of individual aesthetic preference types in terms of nonredundant vs. redundant complexity. Some examples of nonredundant complexity are: Picasso's Guernica, and Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps. Aesthetic preferences are expressions of the individual's perceptual/cognitive/cogitative/action types (abbreviated as "mindscape types"). While individuals who prefer nonredundant complexity tend to be creative, those who like redundant complexity tend to be anti-creative. Furthermore, we must become aware that the individual types are not subcultural variations, but they exit across cultural, social, gender, and professional boundaries, and are therefore transgroup occurrences. The individual types also cut across boundaries between species, and are therefore transeidosic. This knowledge is useful in multicultural management. Awareness of transgroupness of individual mindscape types will reduce self-stereotyping and ingroup homogenization, and contribute to reduction of hostility, violence and terrorism between religious, political and ideological groups. In plain language, some persons in other groups are more similar to you than many people in your own group. Psychological tests are available.