Eysenck's Visual Aesthetic Sensitivity Test (VAST) as an example of the need for explicitness and awareness of context in empirical aesthetics

Abstract

Eysenck's test of visual aesthetic sensitivity (also referred to as a measure of ‘good taste’) was introduced at the International Conference of Psychology and Art held in Cardiff, England in 1983. This response is critical of the test which, incidentally, exemplifies a number of problems to which the field of empirical aesthetics is vulnerable. Major questions raised by the test include whether judgments made with reference to degree of perceived ‘harmony’ can reasonably be taken to reflect degrees of ‘aesthetic sensitivity’, and whether a measure of level (of aesthetic sensitivity) can, at the same time, be taken as a measure of value (of ‘good taste’). VAST is actually seen to be more likely to be a measure of some bias or kind of ‘visual aesthetic sensitivity’, ‘taste’ or perception of ‘harmony’ - as all are polymorphic terms - rather than a quantitative measure to which absolute value-judgments can be applied. Weaknesses in the test design are seen to derive from a variety of sources, including dependence on responses to an extremely limited range of visual stimuli, i.e. black and white shapes. It is argued, however, that the crucial weakness is not simply that the test reflects such a limited position on the nature of both aesthetics and man; rather, it is not actually a test of visual aesthetic sensitivity at all, but a test of something else, which can be defined.