scholarly journals Aesthetic Preference for Glossy Materials: A Replication and Extension

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Silvia ◽  
Alexander P. Christensen ◽  
Katherine N. Cotter
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Openness To Experience ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Color Quality ◽  
Moderating Factors ◽  
Weak Evidence ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
D 23

The psychology of art and aesthetics has a long-standing interest in how low-level features, such as symmetry, curvature, and color, affect people’s aesthetic experience. Recent research in this tradition suggests that people find glossy, shiny objects and materials more attractive than flat, matte ones. The present experiment sought to replicate and extend research on the attractiveness of paper, by far the most widely used material in this growing literature. To control for several possible confounding factors, glossiness was manipulated between-person and varied with methods that held constant factors like weight, color quality, and resolution. To extend past work, we explored art expertise and Openness to Experience as potential moderating factors. A sample of 100 adults viewed landscape photographs on either high-gloss photo paper or on identical paper in which a flat, matte spray finish had been applied. Ratings of attractiveness showed weak evidence for replication. The main effect of glossiness revealed that people found the glossy pictures more attractive than the matte ones, but the effect size was small (d = -.23 [-.62, .16]) and not statistically significant. This effect was significantly moderated, however, by individual differences in the aesthetic appreciation facet of Openness to Experience. When aesthetic appreciation was high, people found the images attractive regardless of condition; when it was low, people strongly preferred the glossy images over the matte ones, thus showing the classic glossiness effect. We conclude with some methodological caveats for future research.

scholarly journals Aesthetic Preference for Glossy Materials: An Attempted Replication and Extension

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Paul J. Silvia ◽  
Rebekah M. Rodriguez ◽  
Katherine N. Cotter ◽  
Alexander P. Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Openness To Experience ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Confounding Factors ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Color Quality ◽  
Weak Evidence ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Attempted Replication

The psychology of art and aesthetics has a long-standing interest in how low-level features, such as symmetry, curvature, and color, affect people’s aesthetic experience. Recent research in this tradition suggests that people find glossy, shiny objects and materials more attractive than flat, matte ones. The present experiment sought to replicate and extend research on the attractiveness of images printed on glossy and flat paper. To control for several possible confounding factors, glossiness was manipulated between-person and varied with methods that held constant factors like weight, color quality, and resolution. To extend past work, we explored art expertise and Openness to Experience as potential moderators. A sample of 100 adults viewed landscape photographs on either high-gloss photo paper or on identical paper in which a flat, matte spray finish had been applied. Ratings of attractiveness showed weak evidence for replication. People rated the glossy pictures as more attractive than the matte ones, but the effect size was small (d = −0.23 [−0.62, 0.16]) and not statistically significant. Attractiveness ratings were significantly moderated, however, by individual differences in the aesthetic appreciation facet of Openness to Experience. When aesthetic appreciation was high, people found the images attractive regardless of condition; when it was low, people strongly preferred the glossy images over the matte ones, thus showing the classic glossiness effect. We conclude with some methodological caveats for future research.

scholarly journals Experimenting with work practices in a liminal space: A working period in a rural archipelago

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (10) ◽  
pp. 1371-1394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanne Vesala ◽  
Seppo Tuomivaara
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Community Support ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Work Practices ◽  
Liminal Spaces ◽  
Work Community ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Work And Life

Lived experiences in organizational liminal spaces ‘betwixt-and-between’ have begun to attract scholarly attention, but the full potential of liminal spaces in contemporary mobile and fluid working life has remained unexamined. This article contributes to theory by showing how a liminal experience in an alternative work environment is created via three dimensions: the aesthetic experience of a different environment, situated practices, and changes to work and life rhythms. Interview material was gathered from creative professionals working temporarily in a rural archipelago environment. The results suggest that the contrast of working in a calm natural environment supported experimentation with work practices, nurtured the formation of a communitas, and spurred imagination and reflection. The arrangement’s temporary nature heightened the intensity of participants’ experiences. However, this intensity varied depending on work community configurations and participants’ personal needs for change. This study deepens the current understanding of liminal spaces by showing how the nuances of physical and social spaces contribute to liminality and how liminality alters work rhythms. Future research should focus on how liminal workspaces can be created for individuals seeking a change in routine and increased community support.

The Aesthetics of Emptiness

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuriko Saito
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Chinese Character ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Ubiquitous Presence

Art is the most effective vehicle for unearthing and highlighting the aesthetic potentials of the everyday life that generally do not garner attention because of their ubiquitous presence and ordinary familiarity. Recent art projects, termed ‘sky art’ for the purpose of discussion in this chapter, illuminate the aesthetics of the sky and celestial phenomena. This chapter analyzes several examples of ‘sky art’ by utilizing the notion of ‘emptiness,’ deriving an inspiration from the identical Chinese character used for both ‘sky’ and ‘emptiness,’ as well as the Buddhist notion of ‘emptiness.’ Despite the connotation of ‘emptiness’ that is devoid of any content or substance, different ways in which sky art facilitates the act of ‘emptying’ enrich the aesthetic experience of the sky and sky art. Sky art thus illustrates how art helps turn the otherwise ordinary into the extraordinary and facilitates its aesthetic appreciation.

Implicit Measures in the Aesthetic Domain

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Letizia Palumbo
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Implicit Measures ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Implicit Processes ◽  
The Aesthetic

The current chapter is concerned with implicit levels of information processing underlying hedonic responses. Commencing with an overview of the processes involved in the formation of the aesthetic experience, the discourse will focus on models that ascribe a role to the implicit dimension, a role that is marginal but necessary. We will see how a range of experimental procedures have contributed to measure automatic components of the aesthetic appreciation. The aim is to assign a specific place to the study of implicit processes within the broader debate on aesthetic experience. Ultimately, this will lead to some general remarks for the discipline of empirical aesthetics.

Environmental aesthetics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Environmental Aesthetics ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Aesthetic

Environmental aesthetics is one of the major new areas of aesthetics to have emerged in the last part of the twentieth century. It focuses on philosophical issues concerning appreciation of the world at large as it is constituted not simply by particular objects but also by environments themselves. In this way environmental aesthetics goes beyond the appreciation of art to the aesthetic appreciation of both natural and human environments. Its development has been influenced by eighteenth-century landscape aesthetics as well as by two recent factors: the exclusive focus of twentieth-century philosophical aesthetics on art, and the public concern for the aesthetic condition of environments that developed in the second half of that century. Both factors broadened the scope of environmental aesthetics beyond that of traditional aesthetics, and both helped to set the central philosophical issue of the field, which is due in large measure to the differences between the nature of the object of appreciation of environmental aesthetics, the world at large and the nature of art. These differences are so marked that environmental aesthetics must begin with basic questions, such as ‘what’ and ‘how’ to appreciate. These questions have generated a number of different philosophical positions, two of which are the engagement and the cognitive approaches. The first holds that appreciators must transcend traditional dichotomies, such as subject/object, and diminish the distance between themselves and objects of appreciation, aiming at multi-sensory immersion of the former within the latter. By contrast, the second contends that appreciation must be guided by the nature of objects of appreciation and that knowledge about their origins, types and properties is necessary for serious, appropriate aesthetic appreciation. Each approach has certain strengths and weaknesses. However, although different in emphasis, they are not in direct conflict. When conjoined, they advocate bringing together feeling and knowing, which is the core of serious aesthetic experience and which, when achieved in aesthetic appreciation of different environments of the world at large, shows just how rewarding such appreciation can be.

Nature, aesthetic appreciation of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Western World ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Ideal Object ◽  
The Third ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Aesthetic

In the Western world, aesthetic appreciation of nature and its philosophical investigation came to fruition in the eighteenth century. During that time, aestheticians made nature the ideal object of aesthetic experience and analysed that experience in terms of disinterestedness, thereby laying the groundwork for understanding the appreciation of nature in terms of the sublime and the picturesque. This philosophical tradition reached its zenith with Kant, while popular aesthetic appreciation of nature continued primarily in terms of the picturesque. In the late twentieth century, renewed interest in the aesthetics of nature has produced various positions designed to avoid assimilating appreciation of nature with traditional models for aesthetic appreciation of art. Three are especially noteworthy. The first holds that the appreciation of nature is not in fact aesthetic; the second rejects the traditional analysis of aesthetic experience as disinterested, arguing instead that the aesthetic appreciation of nature involves engagement with nature; the third attempts to maintain the traditional analysis, while distinguishing aesthetic appreciation of nature by dependence on scientific knowledge. These positions have a number of ramifications. In freeing aesthetic appreciation of nature from artistic models, they pave the way for a general environmental aesthetics comparable to other areas of philosophy, such as environmental ethics. Moreover, the significance given to scientific knowledge in the third position both explains the aesthetic appreciation associated with environmentalism and provides aesthetic appreciation of nature with a degree of objectivity that may make aesthetic considerations more effectual in environmental assessment.

scholarly journals The nature of perception and emotion in aesthetic appreciation: A response to Makin’s challenge to Empirical Aesthetics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Skov ◽  
Marcos Nadal
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Aesthetic Experiences ◽  
Emotional Processes ◽  
Distinct Kind ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Mainstream Psychology

Alexis Makin argued in a recent paper that Empirical Aesthetics is unable to properly advance our understanding of the mechanisms involved in aesthetic experience. The reason for this predicament, he claims, is an inability of current research methods to capture the psychological properties that truly characterize aesthetic experience, especially the unique perceptual and emotional processes involved in the aesthetic experience. We show that Makin’s argument rests on assumptions that are at odds with scientific knowledge of the neurobiological mechanisms involved in the appreciation of sensory objects. We thereafter show that such mechanisms are rooted in shared neurobiological systems, and operate according to computational principles that are common to many domains of experience. This casts doubt on the notion that aesthetic experiences constitute a distinct kind of experiences that can be defined according to a set of special and unique qualities. Finally, we discuss how attributing this specialness to “aesthetic” experiences leads Empirical Aesthetics astray from mainstream psychology and neuroscience.

scholarly journals Fostering the Aesthetic Pleasure: The Effect of Verbal Description on Aesthetic Appreciation of Ambiguous and Unambiguous Artworks

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 144
Author(s):  
Emanuela Mari ◽  
Alessandro Quaglieri ◽  
Giulia Lausi ◽  
Maddalena Boccia ◽  
Alessandra Pizzo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Total Sample ◽  
Verbal Description ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Audio Description ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Retest Session

Background: Aesthetic experience begins through an intentional shift from automatic visual perceptual processing to an aesthetic state of mind that is evidently directed towards sensory experience. In the present study, we investigated whether portrait descriptions affect the aesthetic pleasure of both ambiguous (i.e., Arcimboldo’s portraits) and unambiguous portraits (i.e., Renaissance portraits). Method: A total sample of 86 participants were recruited and completed both a baseline and a retest session. In the retest session, we implemented a sample audio description for each portrait. The portraits were described by three types of treatment, namely global, local, and historical descriptions. Results: During the retest session, aesthetic pleasure was higher than the baseline. Both the local and the historical treatments improved the aesthetic appreciation of ambiguous portraits; instead, the global and the historical treatment improved aesthetic appreciation of Renaissance portraits during the retest session. Additionally, we found that the response times were slower in the retest session. Conclusion: taken together, these findings suggest that aesthetic preference was affected by the description of an artwork, likely due to a better knowledge of the painting, which prompts a more accurate (and slower) reading of the artwork.

Environmental aesthetics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Carlson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Environmental Aesthetics ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Aesthetic

Environmental aesthetics is one of the major new areas of aesthetics to have emerged in the last part of the twentieth century. It focuses on philosophical issues concerning appreciation of the world at large as it is constituted not simply by particular objects but also by environments themselves. In this way environmental aesthetics goes beyond the appreciation of art to the aesthetic appreciation of both natural and human environments. The development of environmental aesthetics has been influenced by eighteenth-century landscape aesthetics as well as by two recent factors: the exclusive focus of twentieth-century philosophical aesthetics on art and the public concern for the aesthetic condition of environments that developed in the second half of that century. Both factors have broadened the scope of environmental aesthetics beyond that of traditional aesthetics, and both have helped to set the central philosophical issues of the field, which are due in large measure to the differences between the nature of the object of appreciation of environmental aesthetics, the world at large, and the nature of art. These differences are so marked that environmental aesthetics must begin with most basic questions, such as ‘what’ and ‘how’ to appreciate. These questions have generated a number of different philosophical positions, which are typically classified as either noncognitive or cognitive approaches. Positions of the first type stress various kinds of emotional and feeling-related states and responses, which are taken to be the more noncognitive dimensions of aesthetic experience. By contrast, positions of the second type contend that appreciation must be guided by the nature of objects of appreciation and thus that knowledge about their origins, types and properties is necessary for serious, appropriate aesthetic appreciation. Each of these two kinds of approach has certain strengths and weaknesses. However, recent work in environmental aesthetics, especially in the aesthetics of human environments and everyday life, demonstrates that although different in emphasis, they are not in direct conflict. When conjoined, they advocate bringing together feeling and knowing, which is the core of serious aesthetic experience and which, when achieved in aesthetic appreciation of different environments of the world at large, demonstrates just how rewarding such appreciation can be.

scholarly journals The Art of Feeling Different: Measuring and Exploring the Diversity of Emotions Experienced During a Museum Visit

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebekah Rodriguez ◽  
Anna Fekete ◽  
Paul Silvia ◽  
Katherine N. Cotter
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Openness To Experience ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Aesthetic Experiences ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Individual ◽  
First Time ◽  
Emotional Balance

The aesthetic experience of a collection of works—such as a sculpture garden, a neighborhood filled with street art, or an afternoon spent wandering in a museum—is not simply the sum of experiences of the individual works. In the present research, we explored visit-level aesthetic experiences in a field study of 298 visitors to a museum of modern and contemporary art. In particular, we focused on emotional diversity: the richness, complexity, and heterogeneity of the emotions that people experienced during their visit. After their visit, participants reported the degree to which they experienced, if at all, 10 emotions, for which we calculated diversity metrics reflecting their emotional variety (the number of emotions experienced) and emotional balance (the relative evenness between emotions or dominance of a single emotion) during the visit. Overall, the sample reported a rich aesthetic experience, but there was wide and predictable variability. Among other findings, emotional variety was higher for people with greater openness to experience and among first-time visitors to the museum; emotional balance was higher among people high in openness to experience and people with greater interest in art. The concept of diversity—the richness and complexity of someone’s emotional experience of the arts—appears promising for understanding holistic aesthetic experiences, such as entire museum visits rather than single works, as well as for many other questions in empirical aesthetics.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document