Do our preferences change?

Aleem and Grzywacz looked at our responses to aesthetics over time and report that “A handful of studies that have measured aesthetic preferences at multiple moments show that preferences may change in as little as two weeks. . . . we measured aesthetic preferences for different colored objects at six-time points, spanning a month. We found that aesthetic preferences were not stable and tended to drift stochastically [randomly] over time. Small statistically significant drifts occurred already after 20 min, and large ones happened after 2 weeks. . . . instability was greater for ‘hard’ choices between colors that were close in chromatic space as well as in their average preference rank. Males were more unstable than females, and instability tended to decrease with age. Surprisingly, no personality traits were found to correlate with how the participants’ aesthetic preferences changed over time.”

Hassan Aleem and Norberto Grzywacz.  “The Temporal Instability of Aesthetic Preferences.” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, in press, https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000543