Aesthetic Pleasure versus Aesthetic Interest: The Two Routes to Aesthetic Liking

Graf, Laura K. M.; Landwehr, Jan R.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00015

Cited by 84 publications

(143 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Our overarching prediction was that our aesthetic liking data would reveal the existence of an interaction between stimulus conceptual fluency and complexity given that high complexity stimuli should trigger more deliberative processing than low complexity stimuli, with such deliberative processing then engendering higher liking ratings at increasing levels of conceptual fluency. Our findings revealed the existence of this expected modulation of conceptual fluency by complexity in relation to aesthetic judgments of beauty, thereby attesting to the predictive strength of Graf and Landwehr's (2015) PIA Model (see also Graf & Landwehr, 2017). Put simply, we predicted and found that people like more complex abstract artworks compared to simpler ones, but only when they can fairly readily derive meaning from these apparently complex stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

“…That said, there are many important theoretical ideas and subtle distinctions that underpin Graf and Landwehr's theorising (see also Graf & Landwehr, 2017), which also render it somewhat distinct from other default-interventionist theories as well as the metareasoning framework. Although we do not wish to get sidetracked either into reviewing the full model or examining recent debates regarding its potential limitations (e.g., Consoli, 2017), we nevertheless wish to emphasise three key assumptions of the model that relate closely to the factors that we manipulated in the study we report below.…”

Section: The Dual-process Approach To Aesthetic Likingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The effects of stimulus complexity and conceptual fluency on aesthetic judgments of abstract art: Evidence for a default–interventionist account

Ball¹,

Threadgold²,

Marsh

et al. 2018

Metaphor and Symbol

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We report an experiment investigating how stimulus complexity and conceptual fluency (i.e., the ease of deriving meaning) influence aesthetic liking judgments for abstract artworks. We presented participants with paintings at two levels of complexity (high vs. low) and five levels of conceptual fluency (determined from a prior norming study) and requested separate ratings of beauty and creativity. Our predictions were derived from the PIA Model (Pleasure-Interest Model of Aesthetic Liking by Graf & Landwehr, 2015), which views aesthetic preferences as being formed by two, distinct fluency-based processes: an initial, automatic, stimulus-driven, default process and a subsequent, perceiver-driven deliberative process. A key trigger for deliberative processing is assumed to be disfluency at the default stage, as caused by factors such as visual complexity. We predicted that complexity and conceptual fluency would interact in determining aesthetic liking, with people preferring complex stimuli, but only when these are relatively easy to process conceptually. Our results supported this prediction for beauty judgments, although creativity judgments showed a curiously uniform profile. Nevertheless, the predictive capacity of the PIA Model in relation to beauty judgments attests to the explanatory strength of this default-interventionist theory of aesthetic liking. We conclude by noting important parallels between the PIA Model and the Revised Optimal Innovation Hypothesis (Giora et al., 2017), which likewise has broad reach in explaining how defaultness and non-defaultness affect pleasure across a range of linguistic and pictorial stimuli.-3 - Abstract Art: Evidence for a Default-Interventionist AccountThe study of aesthetics and its causal determinants is one of the oldest disciplines of experimental psychology, deriving from the foundational research of Fechner (1876), who aimed to draw links between the objective properties of stimuli and people's aesthetic responses such as their judgments of beauty. This theme was taken up in earnest in the 20 th century by Berlyne (e.g., 1971Berlyne (e.g., , 1974, who focused on the underlying physiological mechanisms mediating between objective stimulus properties and aesthetic responses, with an emphasis on arousal states. More recently, Berlyne's insights and empirical findings have been refined as part of the contemporary "processing-fluency approach" to explaining aesthetic pleasure (for a review see Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004a), which claims that people's aesthetic judgments are closely aligned with the subjective ease with which mental operations are performed when perceiving an object.Reber et al.'s (e.g., 2004a) processing-fluency theory has had a major bearing on the study of aesthetics and likewise has much relevance to the experiment we report here, which was concerned with the relation between processing fluency and aesthetic liking in the context of aesthetic judgments about abstract artworks. In motivating our study, we were keen to focus on a fluency facto...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Section: The Dual-process Approach To Aesthetic Likingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of stimulus complexity and conceptual fluency on aesthetic judgments of abstract art: Evidence for a default–interventionist account

Ball¹,

Threadgold²,

Marsh

et al. 2018

Metaphor and Symbol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This influx of neuroscientific data has fermented a revolution in our understanding of aesthetic appreciation, allowing us to go beyond a mere description of "stimuluspreference laws" and study the actual functional machinery involved in aesthetic appreciation (Skov, 2019a). This revolution has also paved the way for innovative behavioral studies investigating such mechanisms independent of stimulus properties (e.g., Brielmann & Pelli, 2017;Graf & Landwehr, 2017;Huang et al, 2018). In his pioneering book Vorschule der Ästhetik, Fechner suggested that aesthetic appreciation could be studied experimentally by scaling the magnitude of a sensory stimulus and relating individual stimulus properties to behavioral responses (Fechner, 1876).…”

Section: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Aesthetic Appreciationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The nature of perception and emotion in aesthetic appreciation: A response to Makin’s challenge to empirical aesthetics.

Skov¹,

Nadal²

2021

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

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Alexis Makin argued in a recent paper that Empirical Aesthetics is unable to properly advance our understanding of the mechanisms involved in aesthetic experience. The reason for this predicament, he claims, is an inability of current research methods to capture the psychological properties that truly characterize aesthetic experience, especially the unique perceptual and emotional processes involved in the aesthetic experience. We show that Makin's argument rests on assumptions that are at odds with scientific knowledge of the neurobiological mechanisms involved in the appreciation of sensory objects. We thereafter show that such mechanisms are rooted in shared neurobiological systems, and operate according to computational principles that are common to many domains of

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“…This relatively simple one-word change in the experimental procedure was used to explore the potential impact of aha on preference and it lead to dramatic change in the pattern of preference ratings. Graf & Landwehr's (2017) work on art appreciation showed that reductions in disfluency, due to on-going processing, lead to greater ratings of interest. In the current studies, searching for a camouflaged object is a disfluent process but its identification reduces disfluency and, in agreement with Graf & Landwehr's (2017) findings, interest in camouflaged objects was greater than in non-camouflaged (immediately apparent) objects.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Graf & Landwehr's (2017) work on art appreciation showed that reductions in disfluency, due to on-going processing, lead to greater ratings of interest. In the current studies, searching for a camouflaged object is a disfluent process but its identification reduces disfluency and, in agreement with Graf & Landwehr's (2017) findings, interest in camouflaged objects was greater than in non-camouflaged (immediately apparent) objects. This difference in interest between camouflaged and noncamouflaged objects was even greater when the reaction time task was missing (Experiment 5) than when it was present (Experiment 4).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competing for affection: Perceptual fluency and ambiguity solution.

Flavell¹,

Over²,

Tipper³

2020

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Human perceptual processes are highly efficient and rapidly extract information to enable fast and accurate responses. The fluency of these processes is reinforcing, meaning that easy-to-perceive objects are liked more as a result of misattribution of the reinforcement-affect to the object identity. However, some critical processes are disfluent yet their completion can be reinforcing leading to object preference through a different route. One such example is identification of objects from camouflage. In a series of 5 experiments, we manipulated object contrast and camouflage to explore the relationship between object preference to perceptual fluency and ambiguity solution. We found that perceptual fluency dominated the process of preference assessment when objects are assessed liking. That is, easier-to-perceive objects (high-contrast & non-camouflaged) were preferred over harder-to-perceive objects (low-contrast & camouflaged). However, when objects are assessed disfluent yet reinforcing ambiguity solution process overrode the effect of perceptual fluency, resulting in preference for the harder-to-perceive camouflaged objects over the easier-to-perceive non-camouflaged objects. The results have implications for preference and choice in a wide range of contexts by demonstrating the competition between perceptual fluency and ambiguity solution on preference, and by highlighting the critical factor of the form of preference decision.

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Aesthetic Pleasure versus Aesthetic Interest: The Two Routes to Aesthetic Liking

Cited by 84 publications

References 39 publications

The effects of stimulus complexity and conceptual fluency on aesthetic judgments of abstract art: Evidence for a default–interventionist account

The effects of stimulus complexity and conceptual fluency on aesthetic judgments of abstract art: Evidence for a default–interventionist account

The nature of perception and emotion in aesthetic appreciation: A response to Makin’s challenge to empirical aesthetics.

Competing for affection: Perceptual fluency and ambiguity solution.

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