Abstract
In two experiments, we investigate group and individual preferences in a range of different types of patterns with varying fractal-like scaling characteristics. In Experiment 1, we used 1/f filtered grayscale images as well as their thresholded (black and white) and edges only counterparts. Separate groups of observers viewed different types of images varying in slope of their amplitude spectra. Although with each image type, the groups exhibited the “universal” pattern of preference for intermediate amplitude spectrum slopes, we identified 4 distinct sub-groups in each case. Sub-group 1 exhibited a typical peak preference for intermediate amplitude spectrum slopes (“intermediate”; approx. 50%); sub-group 2 exhibited a linear increase in preference with increasing amplitude spectrum slope (“smooth”; approx. 20%), while sub-group 3 exhibited a linear decrease in preference as a function of the amplitude spectrum slope (“sharp”; approx. 20%). Sub-group 4 revealed no significant preference (“other”; approx. 10%). In Experiment 2, we extended the range of different image types and investigated preferences within the same observers. We replicate the results of our first experiment and show that individual participants exhibit stable patterns of preference across a wide range of image types. In both experiments, Q-mode factor analysis identified two principal factors that were able to explain more than 80% of interindividual variations in preference across all types of images, suggesting a highly similar dimensional structure of interindividual variations in preference for fractal-like scaling characteristics.
Highlights
Dating back to the Greek philosophers from the 5th century BC, the attempts to understand aesthetics can be cast as a continuous debate between views that consider it determined by objective properties of objects, vs. those that emphasise subjective characteristics of observers in aesthetic appreciation
Images have low semantic meaning, and we do not believe that the observed patterns of preference were substantially influenced by the factors such as interpretability and shared semantic associations related to these images
Our initial experiments (Spehar et al., 2003) used stimuli for which we couldn’t exclude the possibility of a semantics playing a role—photographs of natural objects such as trees and clouds, Pollock paintings which are frequently referred to as organic and look to many like trees and vegetation, and computer simulations of clouds
Summary
Dating back to the Greek philosophers from the 5th century BC, the attempts to understand aesthetics can be cast as a continuous debate between views that consider it determined by objective properties of objects, vs. those that emphasise subjective characteristics of observers in aesthetic appreciation. Both the notions of the universal canons of beauty on the one hand and the beauty as in the eye of the beholder on the other, have been and remain widespread reflection of these opposing views. While Fechner’s (1876) findings have been criticized on methodological grounds (McManus, 1980; Russell, 2000), subsequent investigations of aesthetic preference in most domains have continually sought, and succeeded, in demonstrating robust universal preferences for image properties ranging from balance (Arnheim, 1974; McManus et al, 2010), fractal dimension (Aks and Sprott, 1996; Spehar et al, 2003, 2015), to symmetry (Bertamini et al, 2013), informational content and complexity (Eysenck, 1941; Berlyne, 1971; Garner, 1974), curvature (Hogarth, 1753; Bar and Neta, 2006; GómezPuerto et al, 2016) as well as contrast and clarity (Gombrich, 1979)
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