This article discusses the ways in which the practical benefit of poetry, as a source of healing power to reduce distress, is enhanced through incorporating a detailed analysis of literary texts and their sources that relate to the author's depiction of the human predicament and suggestions for liberation from it. This article focuses on two Romantic poems as case studies, Percy Bysshe Shelley's “Mutability” (1816) and John Keats's “Ode on Melancholy” (1820), to highlight an effective way of inspiring students to (...) recognize the poets’ representations of anxiety and their poems’ therapeutic effects. By pointing out the limitations of recent studies promoting the curative power of poetry, the article examines precise literary aspects of the two works, which facilitate the relief from inner affliction for readers as they discuss in detail the concept of affliction in its association with the realities of instability and depression. It suggests a method of providing poetry education that reveals the paradox of suffering and self-remedy and thereby reinforces comprehension. (shrink)

Lipstick is one of the most commonly used cosmetics, which is closely associated with female attractiveness and influences people’s perception and behavior. This study aimed to investigate the impact of light sources, lipstick colors, as well as gender on the subjective assessment of lipstick color products from the prospective of color preference, purchase intention and sexual attractiveness. The correlation between color preference evaluations when applying lipstick on lips and on forearms was also explored. Sixty participants completed their visual assessment of (...) 15 lipsticks worn by 3 models under 5 light sources, with uniformly sampled correlated color temperature (CCT) values ranging from 2,500 K to 6,500 K. The results indicated that the light source significantly influenced color preference and purchase intention, while lipstick color significantly impacted on sexual attractiveness. The interactions between gender and other factors were also observed and are discussed. Compared to men, women were found to be more sensitive to different light sources and hold different attitudes toward different lipstick colors under different CCTs. Interestingly, no significant correlation was found between lipstick color preference ratings on the lips and forearm, which conflicted with the commonly recognized way of lipstick color selection. These findings should contribute to a deeper understanding of the consumer attitude toward lipstick colors and provide a useful reference for lighting design in situations where cosmetics are specified, manufactured, retailed and generally used, both professionally and in the home. (shrink)

Understanding the factors influencing the aesthetic experience of architectures is an important topic in empirical aesthetics. In this study, we examined the effect of three architectural factors, i.e., ceiling height, openness, and contour, on viewers’ aesthetic appreciation through a series of experiments. In previous studies on architectural aesthetics, participants were usually asked to view an image of an architectural space for a few seconds. The long viewing time allows them to focus on different parts of the architecture and then make (...) an aesthetic judgment. The long viewing time, however, also makes it difficult to obtain viewers’ aesthetic scores for a large number of architectural spaces in a short period. In this study, we shortened the visual presentation time to 200 ms, which allowed the viewers to have only one fixation on the image, and asked the viewers to make an aesthetic judgment. It was found that the experiment with a 200-ms viewing time could establish how the three architectural factors influenced aesthetic judgment as well as previous experiments with a 3,000-ms viewing time, suggesting that aesthetic judgment could be made within one fixation. Additionally, we investigated the impact of color on architectural aesthetic judgment by presenting grayscale images. We found that the three architectural factors influenced aesthetic judgment in similar ways for both color and grayscale images. In summary, we found that color was not a main factor modulating viewers’ architectural aesthetic judgments, and we also presented a way to quickly obtain aesthetic scores for architectural spaces. (shrink)

E-commerce research usually focuses more on how to protect consumers’ rights and increase their purchase intention from the perspective of consumers. However, we still lack understanding of e-commerce sellers, especially cross-border e-commerce sellers. Based on the stimulus-body-response theory, this paper built a moderated mediation model to test the relationships among social support, perceived benefits, perceived usefulness and sellers’ willingness to retain. The results show that social support has a positive impact on perceived benefits and sellers’ willingness to retain; perceived benefits (...) play a partial intermediary role between social support and sellers’ willingness to retain; and perceived usefulness moderates these mediating effects. The research results further expand the perspective of e-commerce research and reveal the mechanism and boundary conditions of the influence of social support on the retention willingness of cross-border e-commerce sellers. (shrink)