Everything’s Relative? Relative Differences in Processing Fluency and the Effects on Liking

Abstract

Explanations of aesthetic pleasure based on processing fluency have shown that ease-of-processing fosters liking. What is less clear, however, is how processing fluency arises. Does it arise from a relative comparison among the stimuli presented in the experiment? Or does it arise from a comparison to an internal reference or standard? To address these questions, we conducted two experiments in which two ease-of-processing manipulations were applied: either (1) within-participants, where relative comparisons among stimuli varying in processing ease were possible, or (2) between-participants, where no relative comparisons were possible. In total, 97 participants viewed simple line drawings with high or low visual clarity, presented at four different presentation durations, and rated for felt fluency, liking, and certainty. Our results show that the manipulation of visual clarity led to differences in felt fluency and certainty regardless of being manipulated within- or between-participants. However, liking ratings were only affected when ease-of-processing was manipulated within-participants. Thus, feelings of fluency do not depend on the nature of the reference. On the other hand, participants liked fluent stimuli more only when there were other stimuli varying in ease-of-processing. Thus, relative differences in fluency seem to be crucial for liking judgments.

Titles change the esthetic appreciations of paintings

“…That is, feelings of fluency might have been discounted by the previous liking rating and hence, did not affect interest (Bornstein and D’Agostino, 1994; Unkelbach and Greifeneder, 2013). However, in contrast to this explanation of fluency being discounted in sequential judgments Forster et al (2015) have shown that fluency manipulation evenly affected two consecutive evaluative judgments. Thus, it has to be tested in future studies whether rating position had an effect on the interest ratings.…”

Beauty at a glance: The feeling of beauty and the amplitude of pleasure are independent of stimulus duration

“…In museums, the average looking time for a painting is 27–38 s (Brieber, Nadal, Leder, & Rosenberg, 2014; Smith & Smith, 2001). Yet, most studies in experimental aesthetics limit viewing time to only a few seconds or less (e.g., Forster, Gerger, & Leder, 2015; Forster, Leder, & Ansorge, 2016; Gerger, Leder, Tinio, & Schacht, 2011; Guo, Liu, & Roebuck, 2011; Jakesch, Leder, & Forster, 2013; Kuraguchi & Ashida, 2015). Might such a limited time for sensing the object limit the beauty felt, or is beauty immediate?…”

“…Rather, they suppose that longer stimulus presentation increases the ease of processing. To assess the influence of processing fluency on aesthetic judgment, they test various stimulus durations in the range of 100–1000 ms (Forster et al, 2015; Forster et al, 2016; Gerger et al, 2011; Jakesch et al, 2013).…”

Global Sensory Qualities and Aesthetic Experience in Music

“…The causal relation between global sensory properties and aesthetics could be further captured in terms of the processing fluency hypothesis, as proposed in the domain of visual aesthetics (Reber et al, 2004; Babel and McGuire, 2015; Forster et al, 2015). For instance, if the crucial feature concerns the distinctiveness of each musical source in the absence of feature masking, then it is possible that the phenomenon reduces further to the notion of processing fluency (Reber et al, 2004), namely the relation between a positive aesthetic response and the ease of processing in encoding and representing e.g., distinct sound sources.…”

“…Spehar et al (2015) reached similar conclusions by correlating visual sensitivity with the aesthetic properties of visual random patters. Other candidates for global sensory properties that have been studied recently include processing fluency (Reber et al, 2004; Babel and McGuire, 2015; Forster et al, 2015), distribution of spectral frequency power (Menzel et al, 2015), self-similarity and fractal properties (Taylor et al, 1999, 2011; Spehar et al, 2003; Hagerhall et al, 2004; Mureika et al, 2004; Graham and Field, 2007; Redies, 2007, 2015; Forsythe et al, 2011; Mallon et al, 2014). …”