Effort after meaning and the hedonic value of paintings

Russell, Phil

doi:10.1348/000712603762842138

Cited by 174 publications

(228 citation statements)

References 8 publications

(16 reference statements)

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“…A recent study in which subjects rated the beauty of portraits, landscapes and abstract paintings has shown similar findings, namely virtually identical proportions of paintings that were perceived as beautiful, neutral or ugly, regardless of their type [15]. Consistent with previous findings [27], our findings further suggest that aesthetic affect of paintings is not only independent of semantic meaning, but also independent of the presence or absence of any meaningful content. Nevertheless, we found longer response latencies during the rating of the indeterminate paintings, suggesting that aesthetic judgment is facilitated when the content of an image is comprehensible.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Perception, memory and aesthetics of indeterminate art

Ishai

Fairhall

Pepperell

2007

Brain Research Bulletin

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Indeterminate art, in which familiar objects are only suggestive, invokes a perceptual conundrum as apparently detailed and vivid images resist identification. We hypothesized that compared with paintings that depict meaningful content, object recognition in indeterminate images would be delayed, and tested whether aesthetic affect depends on meaningful content. Subjects performed object recognition and judgment of aesthetic affect tasks. Response latencies were significantly longer for indeterminate images and subjects perceived recognizable objects in 24% of these paintings. Although the aesthetic affect rating of all paintings was similar, judgement latencies for the indeterminate paintings were significantly longer. A surprise memory test revealed that more representational than indeterminate paintings were remembered and that affective strength increased the probability of subsequent recall. Our results suggest that perception and memory of art depend on semantic aspects, whereas, aesthetic affect depends on formal visual features. The longer latencies associated with indeterminate paintings reflect the underlying cognitive processes that mediate object resolution. Indeterminate art works therefore comprise a rich set of stimuli with which the neural correlates of visual perception can be investigated.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Perception, memory and aesthetics of indeterminate art

Ishai

Fairhall

Pepperell

2007

Brain Research Bulletin

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“…This appraisal is explicitly subjective and metacognitive, because it refers to judgments regarding comprehension, understanding, and meaningfulness (cf. Leder, Belke, Oeberst, & Augustin, 2004;Russell, 2003). Thus, the contrasts between an appraisal approach and a collation-arousal approach should be more obvious.…”

Section: Evidence For Appraisals and Interest In Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional Responses to Art: From Collation and Arousal to Cognition and Emotion

Silvia

2005

Review of General Psychology

306

263

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The study of emotional responses to art has remained curiously detached from the psychology of emotions. Historically, the leading tradition has been Daniel Berlyne's psychobiological model, embodied by the "new experimental aesthetics" movement of the 1970s. That theory explained hedonic qualities of art by referring to arousalmodifying "collative properties" of art, such as complexity, novelty, uncertainty, and conflict. Berlyne's influence on the experimental study of aesthetics has been enormous, largely for the better but also for the worse. Berlyne's suspicion of cognitive psychology led to an unproductive perseveration on arousal as the mechanism of "aesthetic responses." This article describes how appraisal theories of emotion inform the study of aesthetics. Appraisal theories make new predictions about emotional responses to art, expand the domain of aesthetic emotions beyond positive emotions such as interest and enjoyment, inform other theories (e.g., prototypicality models), and reinterpret past findings.

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“…Effort after meaning theory (Russell, 2003) suggests that enjoyment from looking at a painting is derived from successfully interpreting the painting's meaning. Therefore, the more information the participant is given about a painting, the more meaningful a painting becomes, and the greater the likelihood is that the participant will be able to extrapolate meaning.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Aesthetics is rarely investigated in psychology (Averill, Stanat, & More, 1998), and most psychological studies that have considered aesthetics have focused on the underlying cognitive and perceptual processes involved in art appreciation (e.g., Russell, 2003).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%