Beauty in the blink of an eye: The time course of aesthetic experiences

Abstract

Under normal circumstances, perception runs very fast and seemingly automatic. In just a few ms, we go from sensory features to perceiving objects. This fast time course does not only apply to general perceptual aspects but also to what we call higher-level judgements. Inspired by the study on 'very first impressions' by Bar, Neta, and Linz (2006, Emotion, 6, 269) the current research examined the speed and time course of three aspects of the aesthetic experience, namely beauty, specialness, and impressiveness. Participants were presented with 54 reproductions of paintings that covered a wide variety of artistic styles and contents. Presentation times were 10, 50, 100 and 500 ms in Experiment 1 and 20, 30 and 40 ms in Experiment 2. Our results not only show that consistent aesthetic judgements can be formed based on very brief glances of information, but that this speed of aesthetic impression formation also differs between different aesthetic judgements. Apparently, impressiveness judgements require longer exposure times than impressions of beauty or specialness. The results provide important evidence for our understanding of the time course of aesthetic experiences.From the moment we open our eyes, we clearly see the world around us and quickly extract information and meaning from it. Studies have found that when presented with real-world images, people are able to detect objects based on presentations as short as 50 ms and to recognize objects after only about 100 ms of presentation (see, e.g., Fei-Fei, Iyer, Koch, & Perona, 2007;Grill-Spector & Kanwisher, 2005). However, this fast processing comprises different stages. For example, Fei-Fei et al. (2007) found that before 40 ms, sensory-related features (light-dark) are dominant for people's perception of stimuli, while from around 50 ms of presentation, a shift to more object-related features occurs. Subjects are able to name very general object categories like manmade objects ('furniture', 'desk') and gradually get more detailed and accurate over time (Fei-Fei et al., 2007). Such a coarse-to-fine development of percepts has been found in many psychophysical studies (for a review, see Hegde, 2008) and is a core characteristic of the percept formation or microgenesis (Bachmann, 2000). What subjects perceive increases in detail the longer they see it, even if the image does not change. This happens on a very fast timescale (Fei-Fei et al., 2007;Hegde, 2008). A very vivid illustration that such speed and differentiated time course do not pertain only to general perceptual and identification aspects, such as colour or object category, but also to judgemental aspects *Correspondence should be addressed to M. Dorothee Augustin, Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, KU Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, box 3711, 3000 Leuven, Belgium (email: mdorothee.augustin@posteo.de). San Verhavert has moved since this study was undertaken and is now based at Department of Training and Educational Sciences, Research group Edubron, University of Antwerp, Gratiekapelstraat 10, 2000 Antwe...

Gist Perception of Image Composition in Abstract Artworks

“…Moreover, rating scores for pleasing were previously found to become higher with increasing exposure times (P. Locher et al., 2007 ). Together, these results support the notion that the aesthetic evaluation of artworks begins with the rapid bottom-up generation of a gist reaction ( Cupchik, Vartanian, Crawley, & Mikulis, 2009 ; P. Locher et al., 2007 ; Verhavert et al., 2018 ). This gist reaction may be followed by a more detailed exploration of pictorial detail, which is directed in a top-down fashion by cognition-based mechanisms, provided that cognitive information is relevant in the context of viewing the artwork.…”

“…A follow-up event-related potential study revealed a similar processing sequence of style following content ( Augustin, Defranceschi, Fuchs, Carbon, & Hutzler, 2011 ). The study by Verhavert et al. (2018) confirmed that consistent aesthetic judgments can be reached with a short glance at artworks of different styles.…”

“… Rating terms . In aesthetic research, a variety of rating terms have been used, sometimes with different or even opposing experimental results ( Augustin, Wagemans, & Carbon, 2012 ; Cupchik & Berlyne, 1979 ; Cupchik & Gebotys, 1990 ; Jacobsen, 2004 ; Redies et al., 2014 ; Verhavert et al., 2018 ). The different terms, which can have positive or negative valence ( Augustin et al., 2012 ), relate to different concepts underlying aesthetic evaluation ( Graf & Landwehr, 2015 ; Markovic, 2012 ).…”

Attraction to the recent past in aesthetic judgments: A positive serial dependence for rating artwork

“…This high level of agreement between the experiments (and between two independent groups of observers) suggests that both viewing durations were sufficient for participants to process artworks and rate their attractiveness. This is in line with previous reports showing that people are able to form a gist perception of artwork that is consistent across different presentation durations (Augustin, Defranceschi, Fuchs, Carbon, & Hutzler, 2011;Locher, 2015;Locher et al, 2007), or an aesthetic judgment in as brief as 30 ms (Verhavert et al, 2018). However, a recent study accentuated the individual differences rather than shared tastes in aesthetic ratings of artworks (Vessel, Maurer, Denker, & Starr, 2018).…”

“…Most investigations of serial dependence have used brief stimulus presentation times on the order of two to three hundred milliseconds, whereas we presented artworks for 1,000 ms in Experiment 1. Based on previous findings, this is more than long enough to make meaningful aesthetic judgments, which can be formed as quickly as 100 ms (Locher, Krupinski, Mello-Thoms, & Nodine, 2007) or even faster (Verhavert, Wagemans, & Augustin, 2018), but does this response time necessarily mean that the sequential bias of aesthetic judgments would occur quickly as well? With dissimilar exposure time to an artwork, the evidence available on which to base an aesthetic judgment would be qualitatively different, even if the same conclusion can be reached.…”