A ‘Projective’ Test of the Golden Section Hypothesis

In a ‘projective’ test of the golden section hypothesis (Benjafield & Adams-Webber, 1976), 24 Canadian high school students (9 girls and 15 boys), ages 18–19, completed a repertory grid in which they categorized themselves and ten comic strip characters (e.g., Fred Flintstone) on the basis of twelve bipolar constructs (e.g., generous-mean). The overall proportion of cartoon figures which they assigned to the positive poles of constructs (e.g., generous) was 0.615, which is very close to the golden section (approximately 0.618). The theoretical implications of this result and some related findings were discussed in terms of Lefebvre's (1987) computational model of human reflection, Benjafield and Green's (1978) ‘Fibonacci decision rule’ and Berlyne's (1971) ‘strikingness hypothesis’