AESTHETIC PREFERENCE FOR ABSTRACT DESIGNS AS A FUNCTION OF THEIR PERCEIVED COMPLEXITY

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis investigation focussed on two basic questions: What relationship exists between aesthetic preference and the perceived complexity of a set of abstract designs? To what extent do subjects agree or disagree with regard to the judgments in question? In light of some of the methodological ambiguities which were evident in reviewing earlier studies directed at similar problems, a new approach seemed to be called for. Accordingly, a shift in emphasis from the art objects to the individual observers was made, and a new set of stimulus materials was constructed especially to suit the purposes of the study. Whereas in earlier experiments the subject's aesthetic preferences were related to some external measure of complexity, the method here was to obtain both judgments from each subject.Since it is possible to collect the appropriate data via a wide variety of procedures, it was also of interest to know what differences might obtain between the two experimental methods which are most frequently used for relative judgments. Two separate experiments, one using a paired comparison design and the other using a rank order design, were carried out where the main bodies of results consisted of rank‐difference correlations between the orders of aesthetic preference and perceived complexity.The distribution of correlations which emerged strongly supported the hypothesis that people can be classified basically into either of two groups, one which prefers complexity and one which dislikes complexity. This held true for both experimental procedures. In the paired comparison experiment, the correlations between aesthetic preferences and complexity judgments were between +.39 and +.94 for 23 subjects, and between ‐.44 and ‐.92 for 19 subjects. In the rank order experiment, the positive correlations ranged from +.26 to +.85 for 23 subjects, and the negative correlations were from ‐.29 to ‐.94 for 21 subjects.The discussion centered upon two major issues: (a) the role of complexity as a general variable in aesthetic theory; (b) a consideration of how the individual differences which emerged in this study might be interpreted within the general context of perception, personality, and aesthetics. In addition, a number of suggestions were made regarding future research studies.