Contrasting Aesthetic Evaluations of “Graffiti” Images as a Function of Incongruity Intolerance Levels

Abstract

This investigation develops a line of research aimed at examining the influence of incongruity intolerance level on subjects' aesthetic evaluations of relatively harmonious or very conflictual images. Sixty young adults were selected from a larger population and divided into two extreme subgroups: thirty very incongruity intolerant persons and thirty very incongruity tolerant ones. Both genders were equally represented in each category. Selection was based on a specific quick visual procedure, the Building Inclination Test (BIT: Bonaiuto, Giannini, & Bonaiuto, 1987, 1989; Bonaiuto, Biasi, Giannini, & Bartoli, 1996), providing a numerical index of incongruity intolerance, which has also been proved to be positively related to behavioral rigidity and negatively to ambiguity tolerance. Twelve full-color A4 reproductions of American “graffiti” paintings (made from 1981 to 1990 by artists such as Basquiat, Brown, Cutrone, Haring, Scharf, or others) were shown one at a time on a lectern and individually submitted to each subject for evaluating aesthetic and emotional properties using eleven-point scales. Systematic rotation of scales and pictures and double-blind experimental conditions were used. The images were selected corresponding to three categories: a) figurative playful and relaxing representations, b) semiabstract, emotionally quite neutral representations, and c) figurative disquieting, very conflictual representations. An overall progressive decrease of attributed beauty was found moving from the first to the third group of images. This effect was more intense for the very incongruity intolerant observers, who highly preferred images of the first category and deeply disliked those of the third category. On the other hand, the very incongruity tolerant participants recorded on average a less positive aesthetical appreciation score with the first category and a less negative one for the third category (there was a significant interaction between image category and observer's personality, p < 0.002). The aesthetic rejection of the most disquieting and conflictual images especially by the very incongruity intolerant persons is explained by the authors as an effect of the overloading of psychic conflict in this type of persons.