II.--HEDONIC AeSTHETICS

Engineering Aesthetics and Ergo-Aesthetics:

Human factors researchers and practitioners have been focusing research attention on the easeof-use, productivity, safety, comfort, and effectiveness aspects of product and system design. This article argues that it is time that we add another important dimension to the fields of human factors research and practice—the aesthetic dimension. This article discusses the need for the establishment o...

Darwinian Aesthetics Informs Traditional Aesthetics

Hedonic Rarefaction Accompanies Positive Hedonic Contrast

Subjects rated their liking for (Experiment 1) and their preferences between (Experiment 2) weakly hedonically positive test paintings. Some subjects first saw and rated some hedonically negative context paintings. Those subjects reported greater liking for (Experiment 1) and larger preferences between (Experiment 2) the test paintings than did subjects who saw and rated only the test paintings...

Hedonic Games

Coalitions are a central part of economic, political, and social life, and coalition formation has been studied extensively within the mathematical social sciences. Agents (be they humans, robots, or software agents) have preferences over coalitions and, based on these preferences, it is natural to ask which coalitions are expected to form, and which coalition structures are better social outco...

Hedonic Capital

This paper proposes a new way to think about happiness. It distinguishes between stocks and flows. Central to the analysis is a concept we call ‘hedonic capital’. The paper sets out a model of the dynamics of wellbeing in which bad life-shocks are smoothed by the drawing down of hedonic capital. The model fits the patterns found in the empirical literature: the existence of a stable level of we...