The Personality Predictors of Art Preferences in Children

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Art has been considered as a means of enriching oneself with values, transferring socio-cultural experience and traditions. Children articulate their wonder and excitement while engaging with an artwork and it is evident through their spontaneous responses. Aesthetic experience is regarded as fundamental to human existence. Experiencing and enjoying artworks help children to encounter diversities and prepare them for a facing challenge in life. The objective of the present quantitative study is to explore the relation between personality traits and art appreciation of children. The sample constituted sixty children of grade IX from the state of Telangana. The number of boys and girls participated in the study from rural and urban backgrounds are equal and children are in the age group of 13-15 years. Children’s artistic preferences are measured by showing 48 images of artworks of two dimensions: ‘abstractedness’ and ‘complexity’. The ‘abstractedness’ dimension include representational/realistic, semi-representational and highly abstract artworks and the ‘complexity’ dimension encompass low complexity, medium complexity, and high complexity artworks. Each group has four types of paintings: landscape, portrait, still life and animal representations. The results of analysis of the relation between children’s personality traits and their art preferences using Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (r) reveals that Agreeableness and Conscientiousness is moderately positively correlated with the perceived attractiveness of abstract paintings which is statistically significant. The results do not show any statistically significant correlation between Openness to Experience and perceived attractiveness for abstract artworks. Further, there exists a low negative correlation between Neuroticism and perceived attractiveness for abstract artworks which is statistically significant. There are no significant correlations between children’s personality traits and perceived attractiveness for Realistic, High Complexity and Low Complexity artworks. The research findings are an indication for teachers to better design their classroom activities for enriching the lives of children.