Abstract
Five experiments examined preferences for horizontal positions in multiobject pictures. In Experiment 1, each picture contained a fixed object and an object whose position could be adjusted to create the most (or least) aesthetically pleasing image. Observers placed the movable object closer to the fixed object when the objects were related than when they were unrelated (a relatedness bias) but almost never overlapped them (a separation bias). Experiment 2 showed that these results were not due to demand characteristics by replicating them almost exactly in a between-participants design. In Experiment 3, preference rankings revealed a strong relatedness bias together with an inward bias toward the spatial envelope of objects to point into the frame. A weak balance effect was evident in a multiple regression analysis. Experiment 4 replicated the inward bias for the spatial envelope using multiobject groups. Experiment 5 generalized the above findings for different objects when observers had to choose between image pairs that differed only in interobject distance or degree of balance. Strong relatedness effects were again present, but there was no evidence of any preference for balance.
Highlights
The problem of how to compose an image within a rectangular frame in aesthetically pleasing ways is one that faces virtually every painter, photographer, and graphic artist in almost every creative endeavor
The primary focus of the research described in this article is how preference for spatial composition is influenced by the semantic relatedness of meaningful objects, in terms of the optimal distance between objects and their balance within the frame.(1) To
(1) We take “semantic relatedness” to be a general term that encompasses categorical relatedness, functional relatedness as well as their combination. We find these relatedness effects on aesthetic preference to be much stronger than balance effects on preference, which proved to be surprisingly difficult to document at all
Summary
The problem of how to compose an image within a rectangular frame in aesthetically pleasing ways is one that faces virtually every painter, photographer, and graphic artist in almost every creative endeavor. Wilson and Chatterjee (2005) measured aesthetic preference for spatial compositions that varied in balance and found a significant, positive relation Their images were configurations of abstract geometrical elements (circles, squares, and hexagons) whose spatial distribution was manipulated to produce a wide range of values on a mathematically defined index of balance (the Assessment of Preference for Balance, or APB) based on Arnheim’s (1954) structural skeleton of symmetry axes. They found that aesthetic preference ratings were reliably correlated with this measure of balance, primarily because highly imbalanced configurations were disliked more than moderately balanced ones, rather than because highly balanced works were liked more than moderately balanced ones. We believe that people’s aesthetic responses to these images are relevant to understanding how people perceive art, but we leave to future research the application of the principles we report here to the structure of existing art works
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