> it has been clear that people's aesthetic sensibilities are a matter of habit It's not as simple as that. It's a combination of universal patterns (for examp

> it has been clear that people's aesthetic sensibilities are a matter of habit It's not as simple as that. It's a combination of universal patterns (for example unexpected loud & deep sound will trigger specific response in most people) and subjective preferences based on past experiences (which also seems to form by following certain universal patterns). The title of this article is a little clickbaity. What this study finds is that timbre can modify what we perceive as consonant, and it seems that can explain evolution of inharmonic scales in non-Western musical traditions. > The researchers were surprised to find a significant preference for slight imperfection, or 'inharmonicity.' Preferences for slight deviations disappeared upon elimination of the upper harmonics: > We identified a subtle but interesting phenomenon for tones with strong upper harmonics, whereby listeners prefer slight deviations from exact just intonation ... This effect seems explainable by listeners enjoying slow beats, a phenomenon that can be straightforwardly incorporated into interference models of consonance perception. Consistent with this hypothesis, these preferences for slight deviations disappeared upon elimination of the upper harmonics, presumably because this eliminates the slow beating effect. But I agree that there are lots of ways things can go wrong in studies like these. That table height study blunder is hilarious. I haven't heard of it before.