Measuring Judgment Across Aesthetic Domains 

Presenter: Duane Lundy, PhD 

Abstract

Is beauty really in the eye of the beholder?  Is there no accounting for taste?   Are aesthetic judgments destined to be hopelessly idiosyncratic for all eternity?  Are some judges of aesthetics better than others?  Much philosophical debate over centuries has occurred about such questions within aesthetics, but data collection techniques from experimental psychology can inform these controversies. This talk will highlight key findings in Professor Lundy’s and his students’ recent program of research on quantitative ways to differentiate between novice and expert aesthetic judgment. The degree of consensus about quality among independent raters is examined across several studies for albums, songs, films, and even beer. Rating distributions for large samples of ratings by amateur and professional critics are also compared. One music study examines a large sample of professional critics’ album ratings and finds clear patterns in their rating frequency distributions. Another music study compares professional critics’ album ratings to undergraduates’ ratings and finds clear differences between the two groups. A third music study compares song ratings among professional critics and undergraduates and finds similar results, but also finds an effect of musician popularity, but only among amateurs. A study on film critics finds a similar pattern of results as previous studies among music critics, but consensus about the quality of films was even higher than it was for music. This overview will include a discussion of ways to determine higher and lower competence in individual judges of aesthetic products.  

Biographical Statement

Dr. Duane Lundy grew up in Brantford, Ontario, Canada (Wayne Gretzky's hometown). He did his undergraduate work at the University of Toronto, his MA in Experimental Psychology at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and his PhD in Experimental Social Psychology at the University of Louisville. He taught at a small liberal arts college in Gaffney, South Carolina (Limestone College) for 8 years before coming to IU East in 2006. He usually teaches classes like Senior Seminar, Evolutionary Psychology, Statistics, Social Psychology, and Special Topics classes, such as the Psychology of Aesthetics and Interpersonal Attraction. Dr. Lundy’s research interests are in interpersonal attraction and empirical aesthetics. He has published studies on humor and attraction, aesthetic preferences similarity and attraction, nonaesthetic biases, aesthetic rating, music critics, and film critics. He is currently working on a book on music connoisseurship. His favorite hobbies include playing golf and hockey, collecting music and films, and traveling to beautiful places that are between 65 and 75 degrees.