By mthomas
I have kindly been asked to lecture on the groundbreaking Masters degree in Applied Positive Psychology run by Dr Illona Boniwell and have agreed that my talk will focus on ‘enjoyment’. I have therefore been musing on content for this and previously suggested that wine enjoyment W(e) can be understood as a function of 3 main variables;
- features of the wine itself (W),
- personality or self (P)
- environment or context in which it is drunk (E)
W(e) = f (W, P, E)
I am trying to model this in more detail and would really appreciate suggestions regarding the variables involved. The ultimate aim is to minimise attribution errors and optimise the integrative transformation that defines our subjective experience of drinking a wine, and the enjoyment or interest derived from it.
I am also interested in the relationship between Hedonic and Eudaimonic Valence associated with wine consumption. In less jargonistic terms the different types of enjoyment or value that can be had. I sometimes joke that the former (Hedonic- which is associated with the pleasing taste and intoxicating properties of wine) is more likely to give you a hangover than the enjoyment derived from the latter (Eudaimonic aspects such as learning about wine or sharing it with friends).
Martin Seligman, the ‘godfather’ of positive psychology, is a wine fan and I wonder what a positive psychology of wine might look like. I guess key concepts might include ‘temperance’. I would be interested in your suggestions…
Boniwell, I (20068) Positive Psychology in a Nutshell (second edition)PWBC ISBN 978-0954838782
The website of Illona’s Personal Well-Being Centre (PWBC) is here
By mthomas
There is often debate about the nature of ‘fine wine’ and many who argue that, at its best, wine is ‘art’. I am sympathetic to this view although I also believe that anyone who declares themself an artist should be accepted as one regardless of my view of their ‘work’ (which would not be acceptable to many arbiters of ‘taste’ who support the notion of ‘expert’ critics). I am unlikely to settle the subjective v objective debates, and am of course a psychologist not a philosopher but, a recent paper suggests to me that the way in which we think and talk about art shares cognitive commonalities with our talk about wine.
In a recent paper Ayumi Yamada (abstract here) asked one group of students to talk about (verbalise) their reasons for liking 2 different Mondrian works. One of these, the very beautiful Woods Near Oele (above left), is representational whereas the other New York City is abstract (below right). The other group of students acted as a non-verbalising control but also had to decide which they ‘liked best’.
Representational paintings are realistic, with content that can be more easily talked about. Abstract art, by contrast, is less grounded in quotidian reality and therefore trickier to talk about. (BTW I also like the NYC painting)
Yamada’s results suggested that verbalising responses to the painting appeared to distort the participants’ subsequent preferences. Those participants in the verbalisation condition who’d been challenged to say why they liked the paintings were subsequently biased towards choosing the representational painting as their favourite. By contrast, participants in the verbalisation condition who’d been challenged to articulate their reasons for disliking the paintings were subsequently biased towards choosing the abstract painting as their favourite.
Yamada thinks that the apparent ease with which we can verbalise our feelings affects our later judgements. Because participants found it easier to talk about why they liked the representational painting compared with the abstract one, this biased them in favour of the representational painting. Similarly, participants who had to talk about their dislike for the art, found this easier for the representational painting, which subsequently biased them against it.
The finding is consistent with past research showing that attempting to verbalise our feelings can distort our later choices. For example, a prior study showed that participants who attempted to explain their preferences for different jams subsequently showed less agreement with expert ratings than did control participants.
“When lacking access to the exact determinants of their preferences, people with abundant vocabulary [such as when judging representational art] are more likely to generate plausible, yet specious, reasons and still be prevented from appreciating art to its fullest,” Yamada said.
I think Shakespeare nailed the unreliability of reputations which as Iago tells Cassio in Othello are ’oft got without merit and lost without deserving’. Although it should always be borne in mind that Iago, like most people, had an agenda when making the claim…
_________________________________
Yamada, A. (2009). Appreciating art verbally: Verbalization can make a work of art be both undeservedly loved and unjustly maligned. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45 (5), 1140-1143
