Liking for abstract and representational art: National identity as an art appreciation heuristic.

Abstract

Attitudes toward artwork are influenced by many individual and societal factors. One factor that has not been investigated is whether the viewer considers the artist to be an ingroup or an outgroup member. Drawing on 2 social psychological theories—social identity theory and uncertainty-identity theory—we proposed that people can show ingroup bias in evaluating artwork, and that this is more likely when the viewer lacks art-related expertise and experience. We conducted a 3-factor mixed between- and within-participants experiment (N = 335). American and Italian participants evaluated 2 pieces of abstract art and two pieces of representational art that were attributed to fictional American or Italian artists. The key prediction, that participants would evaluate pieces of art, specifically abstract art, more favorably if the artist was a conational than a national outgroup member, was supported, but only among American participants (the Americans had less art-related experience and were more aesthetically uncertain than the Italians). Americans liked American art more than Italian art, American art was liked more by Americans than Italians, and the preference for representational over abstract art disappeared among Americans evaluating American art. Some limitations of the study and future directions for research are discussed.

The role of expertise and culture in visual art appreciation

“…Our results contradict previous (albeit limited) research that suggests people prefer artworks belonging to their own culture or country 6 , 43 , 80 . Indian paintings used in the current study were more contemporary than Western paintings.…”

“…Given the growing multicultural natures of western societies, it is plausible that Western cultures in general are more open or exposed to non-western cultures 81 . Another possible explanation is the “uncertainty-identity” hypothesis proposed by Mastandrea and colleagues 80 . In their recent study, Mastandrea and colleagues propose that national identity may be used to a greater extent as a heuristic to evaluate art when there is uncertainty about oneself.…”

A Unifying Model of Visual Art Appreciation: The Role of Expertise and Culture

“…Our results contradict previous (albeit limited) research that suggests people prefer artworks belonging to their own culture or country (Bao et al, 2016;Yang et al, 2019;Mastandrea et al, 2021). Indian paintings used in the current study were more contemporary than Western paintings (a full list of painters and the year each work was created is provided in the supplementary material).…”

“…Given the growing multicultural natures of western societies, it is plausible that Western cultures in general are more open or exposed to non-western cultures (Herfst, Oudenhoven, & Timmerman, 2008). Another possible explanation is the "uncertainty-identity" hypothesis proposed by Mastandrea and colleagues (Mastandrea et al, 2021). In their recent study, Mastandrea and colleagues propose that national identity may be used to a greater extent as a heuristic to evaluate art when there is uncertainty about oneself.…”

“…The modulation of expertise in Experiment 2 may be explained by the uncertainty-identity hypothesis where national identity may be used as a heuristic to evaluate art when one is uncertain about one's opinions due to a lack of experience or familiarity. Therefore, experts do not show an ingroup bias as they do not need to use an additional heuristic to base their evaluations on, whereas non-experts identify with a group and show ingroup favouritism to resolve their uncertainty (Mastandrea et al, 2021).…”