Do fluency-induced pupillary responses reflect aesthetic affect?

Abstract

Recently, Kuchinke, Trapp, Jacobs, and Leder (2009) used pupillary peak dilations (PDs) to test the hypothesis that fluent picture processing elicits aesthetic affects. They used reproductions of cubist pictures of different abstractness as stimuli, which was assumed to modulate processing fluency. As a result, less abstract pictures were not only processed more fluently and preferred, they also produced larger PDs than more abstract ones. This was interpreted as support of their hypothesis. The aim of the present study was to replicate and generalize these results with an improved method and by adding expressionist pictures, which covered a relatively large range of abstractness. In the first experiment, where art style was blocked, there were no clear results. Therefore, the authors randomized art style in the second experiment. This time PDs increased with decreasing abstractness, even though significantly only for the expressionist pictures. However, there was no relation between preference and PDs. Thus, although they also observed a covariation between abstractness and pupil size, the data do not support the idea that PDs reflect fluency-induced aesthetic affect.Keywords: aesthetic preference, emotion, pupil size, processing fluencyThe question of why we like some pictures or objects more than others has been debated in philosophy for hundreds of years and was one of the first investigated in experimental psychology (Fechner, 1876). Whereas some theorists assumed that aesthetic preference is determined by object properties such as symmetry, balance, proportion, and prototypicality (cf. Palmer, Schloss, & Sammartino, 2013), others proposed a subjectivist view, that is, that aesthetic experience depends on the qualities of the perceiver (Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004). Obviously, these two accounts do not exclude each other. Accordingly, recent models have integrated both views into a single model (e.g., Leder, Belke, Oeberst, & Augustin, 2004).A prominent mechanism demonstrating the dependency of aesthetic preference on the quality and state of the perceiver is processing fluency (Reber et al., 2004;Winkielman, Schwarz, Fazendeiro, & Reber, 2003). It is assumed that a stimulus that can be processed fluently by an observer produces a positive affect because it signals successful recognition and error-free processing. Most interestingly, high fluency usually also produces positive evaluations of the processed object.An important question in this respect is whether affective responses are indeed elicited by fluent processing and, if so, to what extent they are involved in aesthetic judgments, especially for artworks. Recently Kuchinke et al. (2009) tried to answer this question using pupillary responses. Research shows that pupillometry can well be used to examine emotional responses, because pupils dilate if people are excited (Bradley, Miccoli, Escrig, & Lang, 2008;Henderson, Bradley, & Lang, 2014;Partala & Surakka, 2003;Siegle, Ichikawa, & Steinhauer, 2008;Võ et al., 2008). Indeed, in several studies i...

Cortical modulation of pupillary function: systematic review

“…Stimuli causing emotional arousal can be revealed by changes in pupillary diameter. For instance, pupillary dilatation reflects preference for political candidates (Barlow, 1969), alcoholic beverages (Beall, 1977) and visual arts (e.g., Rembrandt’s paintings) (Elschner, Hübner & Dambacher, 2017; Hayes, Muday & Schirillo, 2013; Kuchinke et al., 2009; Powell & Schirillo, 2011; Schirillo, 2014; Alvarez et al., 2015) allowing to predict people’s tastes. Images of human faces elicit a pupillary reaction as well: Angry or fearful facial expressions and images of females increase pupil sizes, in contrast to happy faces and males’ images (Allard, Wadlinger & Isaacowitz, 2010; Blackburn & Schirillo, 2012; Bradley et al., 2008; Chiesa et al., 2015; Goldinger, He & Papesh, 2009; Kret et al., 2013; Lichtenstein-Vidne et al., 2017; Porter, Hood & Troscianko, 2006; Schrammel et al., 2009; Vanderhasselt et al., 2018; Wu, Laeng & Magnussen, 2012; Yrttiaho et al., 2017; Kret, 2017; Hammerschmidt et al., 2018).…”

Peer Review #2 of "Cortical modulation of pupillary function: systematic review (v0.1)"

“…For instance, pupillary dilatation reflects preference for political candidates , alcoholic beverages and visual arts (e.g. Rembrandt's paintings) [121][122][123][124][125][126] allowing to predict people's tastes. Images of human faces elicit a pupillary reaction as well: Angry or fearful facial expressions and images of females increase pupil sizes, in contrast to happy faces and males' images [127][128][129][130][131][132][133][134][135][136][137][138][139][140] .…”

The dynamics of experiencing Gestalt and Aha in cubist art: pupil responses and art evaluations show a complex interplay of task, stimuli content, and time course

“…Building on prior work ( Kuchinke et al, 2009 ; Elschner et al, 2018 ), we will consider a range of ratings for aesthetic judgments and attributes (arousal, clearness, liking, complexity, comprehension, and emotional valence) after image presentation in part 2. Despite a general analysis, where we anticipate positive associations across these attributes with face stimuli and varying levels of fluency, we will also investigate associations with pupil dilations.…”