Selective interference of liking and beauty judgements on affective working memory and visual working memory

Abstract

Aesthetic processing has profound implications for everyday life. Although liking and beauty judgments are outcomes of aesthetic processing and derive from a common hedonic value, there may be some differences in how they engage working memory. This study used maintenance and aesthetic judgment tasks to examine whether liking and beauty judgments make different demands on domain-specific working memory resources. Sixty participants (30 males) were instructed to rate picture for liking or beauty while maintaining the subjective affect or brightness of the presented pictures. Results indicated that liking judgments selectively impaired participants’ performance in the affect maintenance task, and beauty judgments selectively impaired with their performance in the brightness maintenance task. Additionally, maintaining affect and brightness feelings in the mind increased image ratings on beauty but not on liking. Our findings provide evidence that liking judgments draw more on affective working memory resources than beauty judgments, and beauty judgments draw more on visual working memory resources than liking judgments.