The Influence of Art Expertise and Training on Emotion and Preference Ratings for Representational and Abstract Artworks

Abstract

Across cultures and throughout recorded history, humans have produced visual art. This raises the question of why people report such an emotional response to artworks and find some works more beautiful or compelling than others. In the current study we investigated the interplay between art expertise, and emotional and preference judgments. Sixty participants (40 novices, 20 art experts) rated a set of 150 abstract artworks and portraits during two occasions: in a laboratory setting and in a museum. Before commencing their second session, half of the art novices received a brief training on stylistic and art historical aspects of abstract art and portraiture. Results showed that art experts rated the artworks higher than novices on aesthetic facets (beauty and wanting), but no group differences were observed on affective evaluations (valence and arousal). The training session made a small effect on ratings of preference compared to the non-trained group of novices. Overall, these findings are consistent with the idea that affective components of art appreciation are less driven by expertise and largely consistent across observers, while more cognitive aspects of aesthetic viewing depend on viewer characteristics such as art expertise.

Putting the art in artificial: Aesthetic responses to computer-generated art.

“…The impact of image choice on perceived aesthetic value ratings was not moderated by artistic expertise, although art-educated participants provided higher ratings for all artworks, a finding that is prevalent in previous literature (Lindell & Mueller, 2011;Leder et al, 2012;van Paasschen et al, 2015). This contrasts with the findings of Hawley-Dolan and Winner (2011), who found that aesthetic responses to professionally made artworks were moderated by the art educational background of the participants.…”

“…A chi-squared test revealed no significant differences in gender distribution between the three subsamples, χ 2 (2) = 0. (Lindell & Mueller, 2011;Leder et al, 2012;van Paasschen et al, 2015) and therefore differences in these characteristics could account for differences in aesthetic ratings between the experimental conditions rather than the experimental manipulation itself. To explore this possibility, a demographic analysis was conducted for the three experimental samples.…”

Body, Space, and Emotion: A Perceptual Study

“…Contrary to our expectations based on earlier studies (e.g., Bläsing et al, 2012;Broughton & Davidson, 2014;Cross, Kirsch, Ticini, & Schütz-Bosbach, 2011), the expertise of the observers had little influence on the emotion recognition in this study. Overall, our results suggest that the affective components of body expression are less driven by expertise in dance; we saw broadly consistent responses across observers, in line with van Paasschen, Bacci, & Melcher (2015). However, the use of a point-light display based on MoCap recordings could have diminished the impact of expertise.…”

The “NeuroDante Project”: Neurometric Measurements of Participant’s Reaction to Literary Auditory Stimuli from Dante’s “Divina Commedia”

“…This could explain the reason of a lack of increase of EI values along with the increase in the recognition scores. Additionally, evidences deriving from behavioral rating of abstract artworks, support the hypothesis that affective components of art appreciation (valence and arousal) are less driven by expertise acquired through training, while more cognitive aspects (beauty and wanting) of aesthetic experience depend on viewer characteristics such as art expertise [36].…”