Gregson and Bülow (1970) described a study of relative interpersonal perception, with female psychology students as both stimuli and judges in a quadratic similarity task. As a direct follow-up, this present thesis is concerned with cross-cultural differences in judgements of relative similarity of works of art.

The two cultural groups had fifteen subjects in each. The New Zealand sample of students came from the University of Canterbury; the Thai students came from the University of Canterbury, Lincoln College and the University of Otago.

The groups were matched insofar as both had taken (or were taking) Pure Mathematics at University level.

Both sets of students were given the instructions for the quadratic similarity task in their native language (the English to Thai translation being carried out by a friend of the author).

This part of the task may be labelled as one of aesthetic judgement as the subjects not only had to judge the relative similarity of the works of art, but they also had to rate the works on four, bi-polar sets of adjectives (chosen from among seventeen pairs given to them).

For analysis, the quadratic similarity model was applied to the obtained data, and certain output parameters c with scores obt ined by the same subjects on a test of general intelligence which places stress on deductive reasoning.