This paper aims to understand the effects of depiction of coprophagy on people’s gaze direction and duration. This was done by conducting a within-participant experiment (n=10), in which...Show moreThis paper aims to understand the effects of depiction of coprophagy on people’s gaze direction and duration. This was done by conducting a within-participant experiment (n=10), in which participants were shown three different types of video that each corresponded to a condition whilst having their eye movements tracked. The test condition consisted of a video depicting coprophagy. The video of one of the control conditions showed a person eating a piece of bread, whereas the video of the other control condition showed a person resting and observing a piece of paper. Firstly, the paper hypothesized that when presented with repeated exposure to feces (the video of the test condition), people’s gaze would increasingly be drawn to the eyes of the actor in the video. The statistical analyses showed that although a slight increase in gaze duration was found, this was not significant. The second hypothesis was that when presented with repeated exposure to feces, people’s gaze duration toward the feces themselves would decrease. Again, a slight decrease was found, but this was not statistically significant. Lastly, the study hypothesized that gaze increase toward the eyes with repeated exposure would occur more in the test condition than in the control condition in which someone was eating a piece of bread. Although a larger increase was found in the test condition, this was not statistically significant. Further research using different methodologies and larger sample sizes may be needed to offer more insight on this area of evolutionary psychology.Show less
The evolution of Athenian discourses revolving around pederasty is being studied from a political angle, through the contextualization of said discourses into the political and social milieu of...Show moreThe evolution of Athenian discourses revolving around pederasty is being studied from a political angle, through the contextualization of said discourses into the political and social milieu of Athens, from the archaic to the classical period (7th- 4th c. B.C.), with an aim at understanding both the discourses themselves, as well as their thematic evolution, as products and constructs of the political realities of the polis.Show less
The observation of evolutionary processes in cultural expression and art can be traced back to antiquity and has played an important role in historiography and the human sciences in general for...Show moreThe observation of evolutionary processes in cultural expression and art can be traced back to antiquity and has played an important role in historiography and the human sciences in general for centuries. However, over time the notion of directed cultural development towards a point of hypothetical perfection, as well as the corresponding belief in cultural developmental stages, came to be considered out-dated and suspect.The 20th-century abandonment of evolutionist art history is mainly due to the insight that one cannot establish what constitutes ‘improvement’ or ‘increasing complexity’ in the visual arts. Up until the Modern period a sense of directed progress was seen in the perceived improvement in mimetic quality of the artworks. The famous 20th-century art historian Ernst Gombrich in particular strongly believed in an ascending line towards ever-increasing realism. The present thesis concerns the uses of the metaphor of Darwinian evolution for the study of art history. How did evolutionism, before and after Darwin, develop in art historical writing? And how can a renewed analysis of the resemblances between biological evolution and art history resolve earlier problems with evolutionism and result in a reappraisal of the metaphor? The structure of the thesis is twofold. Firstly, we will look at the role of evolutionism in art history, both with respect to a pre-Darwinian, general sense of evolution and to a Darwinian, specifically biological sense. This historical overview will describe the general tendency to read art history as a process of gradual development towards ‘improvement’ and the role biological evolution has played in this perspective. Secondly, this thesis proposes a new role for the metaphor of biological evolution within the field of art history.Show less
