Looking on the Bright Side: Replicating the Association between Brightness and Positivity

Specker, Eva; Leder, Helmut

doi:10.1525/collabra.168

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…hue, brightness, and saturation) and perceived warmth or weight [40][41][42][43]. Research has also shown a connection between brightness of colors and positivity [22,[44][45][46][47][48], which could speculatively contribute to explaining the happy-sad finding. However, we also included a negative-positive scale as such.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

Warm, lively, rough? Assessing agreement on aesthetic effects of artworks

et al. 2020

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The idea that simple visual elements such as colors and lines have specific, universal associations-for example red being warm-appears rather intuitive. Such associations have formed a basis for the description of artworks since the 18 th century and are still fundamental to discourses on art today. Art historians might describe a painting where red is dominant as "warm," "aggressive," or "lively," with the tacit assumption that beholders would universally associate the works' certain key forms with specific qualities, or "aesthetic effects". However, is this actually the case? Do we actually share similar responses to the same line or color? In this paper, we tested whether and to what extent this assumption of universality (sharing of perceived qualities) is justified. We employed-for the first time-abstract artworks as well as single elements (lines and colors) extracted from these artworks in an experiment in which participants rated the stimuli on 14 "aesthetic effect" scales derived from art literature and empirical aesthetics. To test the validity of the assumption of universality, we examined on which of the dimensions there was agreement, and investigated the influence of art expertise, comparing art historians with lay people. In one study and its replication, we found significantly lower agreement than expected. For the whole artworks, participants agreed on the effects of warm-cold, heavy-light, and happy-sad, but not on 11 other dimensions. Further, we found that the image type (artwork or its constituting elements) was a major factor influencing agreement; people agreed more on the whole artwork than on single elements. Art expertise did not play a significant role and agreement was especially low on dimensions usually of interest in empirical aesthetics (e.g., like-dislike). Our results challenge the practice of interpreting artworks based on their aesthetic effects, as these effects may not be as universal as previously thought.

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Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

Warm, lively, rough? Assessing agreement on aesthetic effects of artworks

et al. 2020

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“…For Liking ratings, Luminance was the strongest single predictor. This finding seems somewhat counterintuitive considering that there is a strong association between chromatic brightness and positivity (Specker & Leder, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Liking of art and the perception of color.

Altmann¹,

Brachmann²,

Redies³

2021

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Color has been a defining feature of paintings throughout art history. Despite the great diversity in the use of color between epochs, there are some surprisingly stable and unifying features in chromatic properties across visual artworks. For example, artists' palettes seem to be biased toward the yellow-red range of the spectrum. Here, we assess the impact of a holistic color manipulation (i.e., rotating the color gamut) on aesthetic liking and perceived colorfulness of abstract paintings. We presented 6 versions each of 100 abstract artworks that differed only in the rotational degree of their color gamut within the CIELAB space. Results indicated a very stable preference for the original color compositions-both on a participant level and on an item level. Furthermore, participants perceived original color compositions as more colorful than rotated versions. This effect remained robust even when the exact number of different colors-among other chromatic features-was taken into account in covariate analyses. Thus, it seems that original color compositions are inherently special. Specifically, it seems that the aesthetic appeal of original artworks arises from nontrivial color features, which are characterized by their distribution within the visible spectrum. We assume that the rotation manipulation may change the perception of some colors more strongly than others due to differences in sensitivity of our visual system to these hues. We discuss these findings with respect to category-specific color perception, which may be a potential contender for a neurobiological foundation of the observed effects. Public Significance StatementHuman viewers are surprisingly good at spotting color changes of artistic color compositions. It is still unclear which color characteristics they use for this ability. We systematically manipulated the color of abstract artworks and measured its effect on participants' preferences and perception of colorfulness. We used abstract art because it does not contain any objects that are associated with particular colors. First, we found a systematic shift of artistic original palettes into the yellow-orange color range. Further, participants preferred original artistic palettes, as well as perceiving them as more colorful than manipulated artworks. Even slight changes in the color makeup out of this yellow-orange hue range was connected to decreased liking and colorfulness. Our study provides further evidence that the composition of abstract art is far from random: artists seem to intuitively pick up color features in their art that are optimized for our natural perception of different color categories.

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“…The instrument assesses six formal-perceptual (depth, stroke, balance, complexity, color saturation, and temperature) and six conceptual-representational (realism, emotion, animacy, abstraction, symbolism, and objective accuracy) attributes of paintings. Some properties, such as brightness (color saturation), may be commonly experienced as positive (Specker, Leder, & Zwaan, 2018;. Other properties, such as warmth (color temperature) and happiness (affect), may be person-and artwork-specific (Specker et al, 2020a).…”

Section: Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Modeling aesthetic cognitivism is not straightforward. Although some properties of artworks may have universal effects on people (e.g., brightness and positivity; Specker, Leder, Zwaan, 2018;, artworks themselves are unlikely to be processed in the same way by everyone-people differ in their preferences for artworks (Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2016;Fayn et al, 2019). Researchers therefore need to provide different artworks to encourage engagement for different people.…”

Section: Aesthetic Cognitivism Review 25mentioning

confidence: 99%

Can art promote understanding? A review of the psychology and neuroscience of aesthetic cognitivism

Christensen¹,

Cardillo²,

Chatterjee³

2021

Preprint

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Art promotes knowledge and understanding. Philosophers have debated this proposition, which is referred to as aesthetic cognitivism. Despite its intuitive appeal, few empirical investigations have tested the validity of this claim. In our review, we outline philosophical arguments for and against aesthetic cognitivism. Then, we discuss how empirical aesthetics and neuroscience can contribute to conversations about aesthetic cognitivism, with a focus on visual art. We propose that engagement is necessary to acquire new knowledge and understanding, describe motivational states associated with engagement, and posit who is most likely to experience these states and engage with art. We conclude with a discussion on how aesthetic cognitivism might be measured and modeled. By grounding aesthetic cognitivism in empirical aesthetics, researchers can construct testable hypotheses about art’s role in promoting knowledge and understanding.

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Looking on the Bright Side: Replicating the Association between Brightness and Positivity

Cited by 12 publications

References 18 publications

Warm, lively, rough? Assessing agreement on aesthetic effects of artworks

Warm, lively, rough? Assessing agreement on aesthetic effects of artworks

Liking of art and the perception of color.

Can art promote understanding? A review of the psychology and neuroscience of aesthetic cognitivism

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