A Background Layer in Aesthetic Experience: Cross‐cultural Affective Symbolism

Abstract

This study explored the role of affective/physiognomic perception in emotion perception, and its contribution to meaning construction in the absence of any representation. Following Werner's microgenetic paradigm, by peeling away the fossilized representational level in the drawings, we attempted to link both the “subjective” emotion experience of the artists, articulated in line‐drawings that functioned as the spectators’ perceptual stimulus. Subsequently, a cross‐cultural study was performed using 12 non‐representational, emotion drawings as experimental stimuli of the emotion at hand, to investigate any correspondence of feeling between spectators (152 Canadian, 48 Greek, and 72 Japanese participants) and emotions expressed in the drawings. The results suggested a relative congruence of feeling reflected in the gross classification of the stimuli, and coordination in the organization of perceived affect across cultures. Mood‐state and mood‐trait played differential roles in recognition accuracy. Greeks showed impaired classification for negative drawings, not modifying internal structures accordingly to external constraints, and being oversensitive to subjective arousal in the aversive ambiguous stimuli. Japanese coped with aversion in an implicit aesthetic manner, being task oriented while not flattening the experiential impact of the stimuli. Canadians were not insensitive to body cues, but their impact was overridden by the salience of the attended object.