Sociology and Esthetometrics: A Preliminary Measurement of Esthetic Attitudes

Abstract

Early applications of formal mathematic apparatus to esthetometric research were characterized by efforts to determine the universal deep semantic axes in human consciousness which structure any concrete act of perception of a work of art and which are invariable with regard to both the object perceived and differences in the social and individual psychological perceptual subjects. The results obtained in the course of these early studies aroused interest in experiments directed primarily at the study of the subjective aspects of individual perception. An example of such studies is an investigation into the influence of personal meaningfulness on the degree of differentiation and depth of description by different people using the same list of features [1, 2].