Do happy faces really modulate liking for Jackson Pollock art and statistical fractal noise images?

Abstract

Flexas et al. (2013) demonstrated that happy faces increase preference for abstract art if seen in short succession. We could not replicate their findings. In our first experiment, we tested whether valence, saliency or arousal of facial primes can modulate liking of Jackson Pollock art crops. In the second experiment, the emphasis was on testing another type of abstract visual stimuli which possess similar low-level image features: statistical fractal noise images. Pollock crops were rated significantly higher when primed with happy faces in contrast to neutral faces, but not differently to the no-prime condition. Findings of our study suggest that affective priming with happy faces may be stimulus-specific and may have inadvertent effects on other abstract visual material.