The role of similarity, sound and awareness in the appreciation of visual artwork via motor simulation

McLean, Christine; Want, Stephen C.; Dyson, Benjamin J.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2015.01.002

Cited by 7 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Participants rated stimulus features and previous knowledge as making more important contributions to emotional responses to painting than to music. These impressions are in line with theories (Berlyne, 1974 ) and experimental evidence (Jacobsen and Höfel, 2002 ; Leder et al, 2012 ; Ticini et al, 2014 ; McLean et al, 2015 ; Topolinski et al, 2015 ) that support the relation between perceptual features of paintings and their emotional impact. The present observations do not exclude the contribution of these factors to music-induced emotions, which is well documented in the literature (Gabrielsson and Lindstrom, 2001 ; Gomez and Danuser, 2007 ), but merely suggest that people perceive them as weighing more in the experience of looking at painting.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…The contribution of perceptual features and formal characteristics conveying style has been pointed out by observations that aesthetic preferences form very rapidly (i.e., in less than 1 s), whether in the form of beauty judgments of graphic patterns (Jacobsen and Höfel, 2003 ) or emotional categorization of music excerpts (Bigand et al, 2005 ). Indeed, these rapid responses may involve automatic mechanisms such as visual disambiguation (Topolinski et al, 2015 ) and premotor simulation (Leder et al, 2012 ; Ticini et al, 2014 ), although recent studies also report their interaction with consciously controlled processes such as expectations (McLean et al, 2015 ). The relations between the structural characteristics of music (e.g., mode, tempo) and emotional responses have been systematically investigated (Gabrielsson and Lindstrom, 2001 ; Gomez and Danuser, 2007 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Aesthetic Emotions Across Arts: A Comparison Between Painting and Music

2016

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Emotional responses to art have long been subject of debate, but only recently have they started to be investigated in affective science. The aim of this study was to compare perceptions regarding frequency of aesthetic emotions, contributing factors, and motivation which characterize the experiences of looking at painting and listening to music. Parallel surveys were filled in online by participants (N = 971) interested in music and painting. By comparing self-reported characteristics of these experiences, this study found that compared to listening to music, looking at painting was associated with increased frequency of wonder and decreased frequencies of joyful activation and power. In addition to increased vitality, as reflected by the latter two emotions, listening to music was also more frequently associated with emotions such as tenderness, nostalgia, peacefulness, and sadness. Compared to painting-related emotions, music-related emotions were perceived as more similar to emotions in other everyday life situations. Participants reported that stimulus features and previous knowledge made more important contributions to emotional responses to painting, whereas prior mood, physical context and the presence of other people were considered more important in relation to emotional responses to music. Self-education motivation was more frequently associated with looking at painting, whereas mood repair and keeping company motivations were reported more frequently in relation to listening to music. Participants with visual arts education reported increased vitality-related emotions in their experience of looking at painting. In contrast, no relation was found between music education and emotional responses to music. These findings offer a more general perspective on aesthetic emotions and encourage integrative research linking different types of aesthetic experience.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aesthetic Emotions Across Arts: A Comparison Between Painting and Music

2016

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“…However, replications of this study have failed to find an impact of congruent action on the perceiver’s experience (McLean et al., 2015; Woltin & Guinote, 2015). Though, McLean et al. (2015) found an impact of congruent action on aesthetic ratings when using alternative stimuli and when explicitly informing participants about the relationships between the actions portrayed in the artwork and those being simultaneously made by the participant.…”

Section: The Artist Behind the Artwork: Aesthetic Judgementscontrasting

confidence: 62%

“…This current study examines this relationship between the artist and perceiver considering expertise and two differing styles of drawing (stippling and stroking) using geometric stimuli where the actions of the artist are obvious to the viewer. McLean et al. (2015) found a congruency effect only when using stimuli that clearly portrayed the actions of the creator and when participants were made explicitly aware of these connections.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…This removes the potential influences of familiarity, content, and colour and allows the techniques of the artist to be clearly displayed. Using abstract stimuli is ideal as more attention can be made to the low-level features due to the lack of content within the stimulus (Cupchik et al., 2009; McLean et al., 2015; Nadal, 2013; Stojilović & Marković, 2014).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Enhanced Associations With Actions of the Artist Influence Gaze Behaviour

2020

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The aesthetic experience of the perceiver of art has been suggested to relate to the art-making process of the artist. The artist’s gestures during the creation process have been stated to influence the perceiver’s art-viewing experience. However, limited studies explore the art-viewing experience in relation to the creative process of the artist. We introduced eye-tracking measures to further establish how congruent actions with the artist influence perceiver’s gaze behaviour. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that simultaneous congruent and incongruent actions do not influence gaze behaviour. However, brushstroke paintings were found to be more pleasing than pointillism paintings. In Experiment 3, participants were trained to associate painting actions with hand primes to enhance visuomotor and visuovisual associations with the artist’s actions. A greater amount of time was spent fixating brushstroke paintings when presented with a congruent prime compared with an incongruent prime, and fewer fixations were made to these styles of paintings when presented with an incongruent prime. The results suggest that explicit links that allow perceivers to resonate with the artist’s actions lead to greater exploration of preferred artwork styles.

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The impact of action observation and motor imagery on the aesthetic preference of Chinese calligraphy

Zheng

et al. 2021

PsyCh Journal

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The creation of artwork requires motor activity. However, few empirical studies have directly explored the relationship between the experience of an artist's action and aesthetic experience. This study aimed to examine the effect of observing and imagery of the artist's action on the participants’ aesthetic preferences. In Experiment 1 and 2, we took hard‐pen and brush‐pen Chinese calligraphy images as the stimulus, respectively, to explore the influence of action observation on the aesthetic preference by manipulating the artists’ actions. The results of both Experiment 1 and 2 show that when participants observed the artists’ actions, they tended to report a higher preference for calligraphy images compared with the control condition. In Experiments 3 and 4, we used instructions to manipulate the motor imagery tasks and investigated the effect of imaging the artist's action on the participants’ aesthetic preferences. The results showed that both kinesthetic imagery and visual imagery increased the participants’ preference. In general, our study shows that both action observation and motor imagery contribute to participants’ aesthetic preferences. The results are discussed in terms of how artists’ actions possibly influence the aesthetic preference of Chinese calligraphy.

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The role of similarity, sound and awareness in the appreciation of visual artwork via motor simulation

Cited by 7 publications

References 9 publications

Aesthetic Emotions Across Arts: A Comparison Between Painting and Music

Aesthetic Emotions Across Arts: A Comparison Between Painting and Music

Enhanced Associations With Actions of the Artist Influence Gaze Behaviour

The impact of action observation and motor imagery on the aesthetic preference of Chinese calligraphy

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