Behaviorism and aesthetics? The life and career of Daniel E. Berlyne

Daniel Berlyne (1924-1976) was a psychologist who studied a diversity of topics during his career. His topics of inquiry ranged from the orientation reaction in animals to artistic preferences in humans. The purpose of the current study is to resolve the question: how did a man who was committed to the study of behavior and motivation through comparative research and experimentalism arrive at the latter part of his career to the study of arts and aesthetics? The work done by Berlyne in the late 1970s in experimental aesthetics has left an indelible legacy in the field. The goal of this project is to illuminate the continuities in his early neobehaviorial work on exploratory behavior in animals in to his later work on preferences in the arts.