Entropy, visual diversity, and preference.

The author reports relationships between subjective impressions of visual diversity or pleasure with statistical entropies of stimuli. The stimuli were 34 rows of houses that varied in color, scale, and shape, or in shape and articulation. Entropies ranged from 0.0 to 5.6 bits. Fifty-seven participants rated the stimuli on scales of pleasant/unpleasant and uniform/diverse. The relationship between rated diversity and entropy was strong and linear. The relationship between rated pleasure and entropy was either linear or asymptotic, but no evidence was found for an inverted U relationship.