Rolf Reber
Rolf Reber | |
|---|---|
| File:Rolf Reber official.jpg | |
| Born | May 17, 1959 |
| Nationality | Swiss |
| Known for | Processing fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychology |
| Institutions | University of Bergen |
Rolf Reber (born 17 May 1959 in Basel, Switzerland) is professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Bergen in Norway.
Rolf Reber is known for his research on processing fluency, especially the processing fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure he developed together with Norbert Schwarz from the University of Michigan and Piotr Winkielman from the University of California at San Diego. [1] The core assumption of the theory is that an audience draws aesthetic pleasure from the fact that an object can be processed easily, especially if a viewer remains unaware of the source of this processing ease. This theory resolves an apparent contradiction between the uniformity of musical preferences in infants and the cultural differences of musical tastes in adults. Infants prefer consonant melodies because newborns share biological mechanisms that make them process consonance in music more easily than dissonance. When children grow up, they are exposed to the music of their culture, explaining why individuals from different cultures have different musical tastes. In addition, research found that processing fluency influences both affect[2] and the judged truth of statements[3]. This suggests that both perceived beauty and judged truth have a common underlying experience, namely ease of processing. This observation fits anecdotal observations that mathematicians and scientists often use beauty of a theorem as an indication for its truth, an idea that has been explored in more recent work[4]. The processing fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure and its implications has influenced work in psychology[5], philosophy[6], marketing[7] [8], finance[9], and archeology.[10]
More recently, Rolf Reber and his collaborators have developed and explored Example Choice, an instructional technique designed to increase relevance and student interest in the learning of abstract principles in mathematics and science. Students are given examples from different topics that all address the same underlying principle, and a student has to choose the example that interests him or her most. The chosen example is then used to explain the formal principle. This technique is supposed to connect the formal principle to students’ interest. Research has shown that students become more interested and spend more time learning the principle when they can choose an example than when they are given an example.[11] The principle of example choice has been implemented in ExampleWiki.
Rolf Reber is author of two popular science books in German, among them “Kleine Psychologie des Alltäglichen” (A brief psychology of everyday life) which has been translated into Korean and Chinese.[12]
References
- ^ Reber, R., Schwarz, N., Winkielman, P.: "Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in the perceiver's processing experience?", Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(4):364-382.
- ^ Reber, R., Winkielman, P. & Schwarz, N. (1998). Effects of perceptual fluency on affective judgments. Psychological Science, 9, 45-48.
- ^ Reber, R., & Schwarz, N. (1999). Effects of perceptual fluency on judgments of truth. Consciousness and Cognition, 8, 338-342.
- ^ Reber, R., Brun, M., & Mitterndorfer, K. (2008). The use of heuristics in intuitive mathematical judgment. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15, 1174-1178.
- ^ Gazzaniga, M. S. (2008). Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique. New York: Ecco Books, Harper Collins.
- ^ Scharfstein, B.-A. (2009). Art without borders: A philosophical exploration of art and humanity. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
- ^ Lee, A. Y., & Labroo, A. A. (2004). The Effect of Conceptual and Perceptual Fluency on Brand Evaluation. Journal of Marketing Research, 41 (2004): 151–165.
- ^ Labroo, A. A., Dhar, R., & Schwarz, N. (2008). Of frogs, wines, and frowning watches: Semantic priming, perceptual fluency, and brand evaluation. Journal of Consumer Research, 34, 819-831.
- ^ Alter, A. L.; Oppenheimer, D. M. (May 2, 2006), Predicting short-term stock fluctuations by using processing fluency (PDF), p. 4
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) - ^ Hodgson, D. (2009). Symmetry and humans: reply to Mithen's 'Sexy Handaxe Theory'. Antiquity, 83, 195-198.
- ^ Reber, R., Hetland, H., Chen, W., Norman, E., & Kobbeltvedt, T. (2009): Effects of example choice on interest, control, and learning. In: Journal of the Learning Sciences. 18 (4): 509–548.
- ^ Reber, R. (2008). Kleine Psychologie des Alltäglichen ((A brief psychology of everyday life), 2nd edition. München: C.H. Beck.
External links
