Visual and Verbal Approach Motives as a Function of Discrepancy from Expectancy Level

Abstract

It was hypothesized that Ss would visually fixate and find more esthetically pleasing nonsense shapes that were slightly discrepant in similarity from a schema that had been developed by repeated stimulation, than would be the case for shapes that were greatly discrepant from the schema stimulus. Both for measures of eye-movement fixation and verbal report, preference was greatest for the slightly discrepant, and least for the most discrepant figure. The results were interpreted in terms of McClelland's discrepancy hypothesis of affect and the concept of schemata as used by Oldfield and others.