Abstract
The extent to which aesthetic preferences are ‘innate’ has been highly debated (Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(4), 364–382, 2004). For some types of visual stimuli infants look longer at those that adults prefer. It is unclear whether this is also the case for colour. A lack of relationship in prior studies between how long infants look at different colours and how much adults like those colours might be accounted for by stimulus limitations. For example, stimuli may have been too desaturated for infant vision. In the current study, using saturated colours more suitable for infants, we aim to quantify the relationship between infant looking and adult preference for colour. We take infant looking times at multiple hues from a study of infant colour categorization (Skelton, Catchpole, Abbott, Bosten, & Franklin, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(21), 5545–5550, 2017) and then measure adult preferences and compare these to infant looking. When colours are highly saturated, infants look longer at colours that adults prefer. Both infant looking time and adult preference are greatest for blue hues and are least for green-yellow. Infant looking and adult preference can be partly summarized by activation of the blue-yellow dimension in the early encoding of human colour vision. These findings suggest that colour preference is at least partially rooted in the sensory mechanisms of colour vision, and more broadly that aesthetic judgements may in part be due to underlying sensory biases.
Highlights
It is well established that humans have preferences for some visual stimuli over others, for example, preferences for specific faces, patterns, colours or spatial compositions (Fancher, 1996; Palmer & Schloss, 2010; Rhodes, Hickford, & Jeffery, 2000)
One idea is that preferred visual stimuli have characteristics that are optimal for the human visual system to process, and that these preferences are to some extent ‘innate’ (Krentz & Earl, 2013; Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1999)
There are many factors which undoubtedly have an effect on adult colour preference, here we investigate how a common factor to both infants and adults, the mechanisms underlying colour vision, can influence response to colour
Summary
It is well established that humans have preferences for some visual stimuli over others, for example, preferences for specific faces, patterns, colours or spatial compositions (Fancher, 1996; Palmer & Schloss, 2010; Rhodes, Hickford, & Jeffery, 2000). The source of these perceptual and aesthetic preferences is debated (Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1999; Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004). One idea is that preferred visual stimuli have characteristics that are optimal for the human visual system to process, and that these preferences are to some extent ‘innate’ (Krentz & Earl, 2013; Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1999) In support of this idea, there is evidence that infants look longer at visual stimuli that adults. In the case of colour preferences, the relationship between infant looking and adult preference is less clear
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