Rolf Reber

Rolf Reber ( born May 17, 1959 in Basel ) is a Swiss psychologist. He is Professor of Psychology at the University of Oslo.

Life

Reber received his doctorate in 1994 from the University of Bern in psychology. He habilitated in 1999. He taught from 2003 as an extraordinary and from 2004 as Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bergen. Since 2013 he is Professor of General Psychology at the University of Oslo.

Research

He has done research on the processing of liquid ( engl. processing fluency ), especially for him, Norbert Schwarz ( University of Michigan ) and Piotr Winkielman ( University of California, San Diego ) developed to process liquid theory of beauty.

According to this theory, the beauty experience depends on the ease of experienced cognitive processing of the object from, especially if the source of processing liquid (for example, symmetrical ) remains unknown. This theory resolved the apparent contradiction between on the equality of musical preferences in young children and the difference musical taste in adults in different cultures. It could be shown, generally consonant melodies that infants prefer dissonant melodies; also consonant melodies can be processed more easily than dissonant melodies. When children grow up, they hear the music of their culture, which increases the processing liquid for this music, which leads to differences in musical taste between different cultures.

Since the processing liquid influences both affective as well as truth judgments, judgments of beauty and truth are likely experiencing liquid processing are based. This would also explain why mathematicians sometimes use a beauty problem-solving as an indication of the truth: Since the problem solution can be applied in liquid form, it is perceived both as beautiful as well as true. In fact, people use the simplicity and beauty of a task graphically depicted as an indication that the solution of the problem is correct. The processing of liquid and its effects can help explain the phenomenology of Aha - experience. An extension of the processing liquid theory takes into account the fact that many works of art are difficult to process, they can still be interpreted by the audience, however, and find its favor.

Next, Rolf Reber concerned with computer- based learning. From the developed among others by him POSbase database that contains presentations of psychological studies new methods emerged for improving motivation in learning formal content in mathematics and science.

Nonfiction author

Reber is to psychological issues the author of two non-fiction books: The translated "Small psychology of everyday life " illustrates the everyday relevance of 77 psychological experiments and was into Chinese and into Korean. His second book, " Well done! Small psychology of virtue, " shows how psychology can help this as good Detected to do correctly.

Publications

• Conceptual and sensorimotor effects of emotion on memory. Dissertation, University of Bern, 1994.
• Clearly recognized - already decided: the influence of perceptual fluency on evaluative judgments. Huber, Bern, 2001.
• Small psychology of everyday life: 77 lessons to better understand life. Beck, Munich, 2007.
• Good thing! Small psychology of virtue. Beck, Munich, 2008.