Viewers recognize the process of creating artworks with admiration: Evidence from experimental manipulation of prior experience.

Abstract

This study examined the role of recognizing the process of creating an artwork in cognitive processes of art viewing. To this end, we conducted 2 experiments in which participants’ prior experience was manipulated and investigated whether and how creative experience influences subsequent cognitive processes while viewing artworks. Study 1 (N = 45) revealed that having creative experience before art viewing changes viewers’ recognition of the process of creating the artwork and causes them to have a more positive impression of artworks. It was also revealed that these 2 changes are correlated. In particular, the emotion of admiration, which is considered a kind of social emotion, was found to be highly correlated with the recognition of assessed difficulty of creation. Study 2 (N = 38) tested the generalizability of that phenomenon by extending types of stimuli and investigated the cognitive mechanism behind it in a more detailed way using protocol analysis. The results showed that the effect appears, regardless of artwork type, and provided support to explain the mechanism in terms of viewers’ degree of confidence. These results suggest it is important to consider recognition of the process of creating an artwork when addressing art appreciation.

Imagining How Lines Were Drawn: The Appreciation of Calligraphy and the Facilitative Factor Based on the Viewer’s Rating and Heart Rate

“…In addition, because expertise often has a positive impact on the viewer's aesthetic impression (cf. Leder et al, 2012;van Paasschen et al, 2015;Matsumoto and Okada, 2019), the fact that the frequency of viewing positively correlates with admiration is not surprising.…”

“…Second, in exploring calligraphy as art, we can be informed by theories in the psychology of aesthetics for a deep discussion. Grounded in the theories in question, we expect that calligraphy works convey some information to the viewer other than semantic content, which is not limited to speculative calligraphers' personalities graphologists have suggested so far, but may include recognition of calligraphers' skills, or of the process of writing calligraphy (Matsumoto and Okada, 2019), as described in the next section.…”

“…Whereas many studies have revealed the effect of directly presented information about the creator upon the viewer’s evaluation, viewers can adopt a new way of viewing art following a change in their own cognitive structure, even without such a direct presentation of information as the one used by Jucker et al (2014 ; Matsumoto and Okada, 2019 ). By comparing viewers with and without prior experience of creating origami works in a laboratory, Matsumoto and Okada (2019) found that viewers’ own creative experiences enabled them to discern and imagine the process of creating artworks (creative origami works) by others in more detail, followed by the promotion of the aesthetic experience in a positive direction, including admiration elicited by upward social comparison. Matsumoto and Okada (2019) discovered that individual differences in cognitive processes of art-viewing – which are especially salient in the comparison between experts and novices (cf.…”

“…By comparing viewers with and without prior experience of creating origami works in a laboratory, Matsumoto and Okada (2019) found that viewers’ own creative experiences enabled them to discern and imagine the process of creating artworks (creative origami works) by others in more detail, followed by the promotion of the aesthetic experience in a positive direction, including admiration elicited by upward social comparison. Matsumoto and Okada (2019) discovered that individual differences in cognitive processes of art-viewing – which are especially salient in the comparison between experts and novices (cf. Leder et al, 2004 ; Leder et al, 2012 ; Bullot and Reber, 2013 ) – are reproducible to some degree with novices’ acquired experiences of creation.…”

“… Leder et al, 2004 ; Leder et al, 2012 ; Bullot and Reber, 2013 ) – are reproducible to some degree with novices’ acquired experiences of creation. On the other hand, whether the key determinant of the aesthetic experience is the creative experience, or the way in which the process of creating a work is perceived, remains unresolved; Matsumoto and Okada (2019) imply the latter based on post-hoc correlational analysis.…”