DOES SURPRISE INCREASE AROUSAL WHICH AFFECTS PLEASANTNESS?

The present paper has a theoretical and methodological focus. It examines a key variable identified in an early review of the foundations of environmental aesthetics: Surprise. For the physical environment, surprise is an emotion that arises from a discrepancy between the present environment and what the observer expected (Wohlwill, 1976). Surprise is a form of stimulus conflict that arises from a departure from an expectation created by the context of the previous experience (Berlyne, 1972). The present research sought to test three levels of surprise: low, medium, high. It had two studies. The first study tested the psychometric properties of the three-item scales used for measuring arousal and pleasantness on a sample of 107 adults, 46 from US and 61 from Italy. The second study involved 188 adults (121 from US and 67 from Italy) and included a manipulation test of the effects of the physical manipulations on judged differences between the spaces (a perceptual-cognitive measure of surprise) to see if the manipulations of surprise work as intended, and then it tested arousal and pleasantness in relation of surprise and to one another. We found mixed results for the effect of surprise on arousal and preference.