Making meaning brings pleasure: The influence of titles on aesthetic experiences.

Abstract

The extent to which titles influence aesthetic experiences was examined in 3 experiments. Participants viewed and rated illustrations and photographs on understanding and qualities of the aesthetic experience (e.g., enjoyment, interest). The presence and type of title were manipulated across conditions and experiments. Metaphorical titles led to greater aesthetic experiences than either no title or descriptive titles (the elaboration effect). The elaboration effect occurred regardless of whether participants believed the titles to be true or false. It also occurred for art-experienced participants, but only for representational and not abstract illustrations. Random titles lowered understanding but not aesthetic experiences. Overall, titles increased aesthetic experiences only when they contributed to rich and coherent representations.There is a complex mix of cognitive and emotional processing that occurs when we appreciate different visual scenes, including visual artwork. When we view representational paintings, for example, discernable objects in the visual array (e.g., objects, people, and places) must be parsed by means of pattern recognition before their concepts are activated in working memory. In addition to understanding the explicit relations among the concepts, we often draw inferences regarding how the various components work together to form the whole, about the fictive world depicted by the artist, and about the artist's intention. In addition to these representations, we might experience several emotional responses like enjoyment, displeasure, involvement, and interest during the course of comprehension. Collectively, cognitive and emotional responses to art are called aesthetic experiences.The purpose of this study is to examine how verbal information in the form of a title affects and guides our cognitive and emotional responses to viewing artwork. How would a title, label, or any verbal information affect our cognitive processing and aesthetic experiences to a visual scene? Without a title, the representation of the artwork would be primarily derived from the explicit artwork, its immediate context, and the viewer's world knowledge. This representation might be referred to as the "artwork-only" representation. A title would activate schematic information that might add to or otherwise alter this representation. The resulting representation might be referred to as the "artwork-plus-title" representation. Therefore, one might rephrase the question of how titles affect aesthetic experiences as how these two types of representations might differentially affect cognitive and emotional processing.Titles could affect the coherence of the resulting representation by activating schematic information stored in long-term memory. Titles of texts and simple line drawings have been shown to influence

How temporal distance changes novices' attitudes towards unconventional arts.

“…For example, it has been theorized and shown that good mood, positive environments, and benign situations enhance abstract processing and inclusive categorization whereas bad mood, threatening environments, and insecure situations enhance a more concrete thinking style and exclusive categorization (Gasper & Clore, 2002;Isen & Daubman, 1984;Friedman & Förster, 2000, 2001Förster & Higgins, 2005; for a review see Friedman & Förster, 2007). Recently, we (Förster & Schimmel, under review) were able to show such subtle influences on attitudes toward conventional and unconventional arts.…”

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

“…Moreover, the range of effects was greater for appraisals of ability to understand The Appraisal Basis of Expertise A final experiment (Silvia, in press) applied the appraisal model to the study of artistic expertise. Many studies have revealed expert-novice differences in emotional responses to art (e.g., Hekkert & van Wieringen, 1996a, 1996bMillis, 2001). A typical finding in this area is that people with experience in art prefer works higher in complexity than do people without expertise in art (Hare, 1974;Walker, 1980).…”

Affective Analysis of Abstract Paintings Using Statistical Analysis and Art Theory

“…These works demonstrated that people describe paintings differently after they read the title Franklin et al [1993]. Also, they postulate that title and description of paintings can improve the understanding Leder et al [2006] and the aesthetic evaluation Hristova et al [2011]; Millis [2001]. The influence of title and description is even more crucial for abstract artworks where the visual clues are open to interpretation.…”

“…Millis [2001] investigate the effects of metaphorical (or elaborative) and descriptive titles on the understanding, the level of emotional responses, interest, enjoyment, and elicited thoughts of artworks. He observed that metaphorical titles, increases the aesthetic experience more than no title or descriptive titles.…”