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Architectural Aesthetics and Personality: An Experiment to Research the Correlations Between Personality Traits and Visual Preferences for Complexity in Architectural Scenes

In architecture, sparse research has been conducted on the effects of psychometric factors over the stylistic preferences of actors. The overlapping research between psychology and architectural aesthetics shows some consistent relationships between distinct facets of personality and visual preferences [Cleridou and Furnham 2014; Cook and Furnham 2012]. Those findings are incipient and are based on specific architectural styles. In the interest of producing general standard measurements for the architectural stylistic preferences of groups and individuals, this paper explores the following question: ‘What aspects of trait personality can predict an actor’s preferences for visual complexity in architecture?’ The paper starts from the current state of the art in visual cognition, trait theory and complexity, followed by an experiment designed to test correlations between architectural visual preferences for complexity and personality traits. Seven participants had some type of architectural training while the other three were part of the general population. The sample’s cultural background varied slightly most having a Romanian, British or Malaysian nationality. The findings describe possible linear relationships between high general complexity and intellect (p=0.004), and respectively broad extroversion (p=0.001). Other findings show possible links between self-consciousness (p=0.016) and high complexity interiors, as well as broad agreeableness (p=0.011) and medium complexity surfaces. Participant rated familiarity might not explain the high significance. The small sample sizes and other limitations are possible causes of the overly optimistic nature of the results. Successful developments in this area are potentially valuable in contemporary industrial research with applications in business intelligence. Other theoretical potential and use scenarios are discussed.