Effects of Implied Motion and Facing Direction on Positional Preferences in Single-Object Pictures

Abstract

Palmer, Gardner, and Wickens studied aesthetic preferences for pictures of single objects and found a strong inward bias: Right-facing objects were preferred left-of-center and left-facing objects right-of-center. They found no effect of object motion (people and cars showed the same inward bias as chairs and teapots), but the objects were not depicted as moving. Here we measured analogous inward biases with objects depicted as moving with an implied direction and speed by having participants drag-and-drop target objects into the most aesthetically pleasing position. In Experiment 1, human figures were shown diving or falling while moving forward or backward. Aesthetic biases were evident for both inward-facing and inward-moving figures, but the motion-based bias dominated so strongly that backward divers or fallers were preferred moving inward but facing outward. Experiment 2 investigated implied speed effects using images of humans, horses, and cars moving at different speeds (e.g., standing, walking, trotting, and galloping horses). Inward motion or facing biases were again present, and differences in their magnitude due to speed were evident. Unexpectedly, faster moving objects were generally preferred closer to frame center than slower moving objects. These results are discussed in terms of the combined effects of prospective, future-oriented biases, and retrospective, past-oriented biases.

The center cannot hold: Variations of frame width help to explain the “inward bias” in aesthetic preferences

“…For this reason, it would be insufficient simply to conclude from the current study that both the borders and the center play a role: the former clearly must, while the latter may not. And this stands in stark contrast to the "affordance space" view, which often explicitly references the fundamental role of the center (as in the quote above from Palmer & Langlois, 2017), but which to our knowledge has never mentioned any role for the frame borders, per se.…”

“…1a vs. 1b). This inward bias is extremely pervasive, and it occurs across wide variations in types of scenesincluding both single objects (Palmer et al, 2008) and arrangements of multiple objects (Leyssen et al, 2012); both static images and dynamic movies (Bode et al, 2016); both horizontal frames (Palmer et al, 2008) and vertical (and circular) frames (Chen & Scholl, 2014;; and with both meaningless geometric shapes (Chen & Scholl, 2014;Guidi & Palmer, 2015) and meaningful images of people (Chen et al, 2018), animals (Bertamini et al, 2011), and even man-made artifacts (Palmer & Langlois, 2017). These effects occur with the real-world composition of elements in artificial frames in both photography (Gardner et al, 2008;Palmer et al, 2008) and painting (Bertamini et al, 2011) but they presumably also reflect how we choose to view scenes through the "frame" of our own field of view.…”

A Forward Bias in Human Profile‐Oriented Portraits

“…There is some experimental and observational evidence for these conjectures. Experimental participants tend to put more space in front, rather than behind agents and oriented artifacts in a drag‐and‐drop task (Palmer & Langlois, 2017). Pictures in which agents, humans and animals, or artifacts are depicted with more free space in front than behind them have also been judged aesthetically more pleasing (Palmer, Gardner, & Wickens, 2008).…”

Altering balance perception through the agent’s expression: Happy face suppresses the inward bias.

“…For example, when taking pictures of friends, we tend to position the friend facing inward (i.e., facing toward the center of the frame) rather than outward. This phenomenon, known as the inward bias (Chen et al, 2018; Palmer & Langlois, 2017; Sammartino & Palmer, 2012), refers to the tendency to place an object on the opposite side of its orientation in the view to achieve a sense of visual balance (Palmer et al, 2008). As shown in Figure 1, we typically place a right-facing cat on the left side of the frame (see Figure 1A), rather than the right side (see Figure 1B).…”