Interest and Pleasure as Dimensions of Aesthetic Response

A study was conducted comparing cognitive and affective responses to a set of twelve paintings. Forty subjects, including an equal number of naive and trained males and females, rated the paintings individually on a series of scales including: simple-complex, warm-cold, unemotional-emotional, not at all meaningful-meaningful, and familiar-unfamiliar. They also made comparative judgments of relative “interest” and “pleasure” between all possible pairs (66) of the paintings. “Interest” judgments were made under an objective and analytical task set, while “pleasing” judgments were made from a subjective and personal set. A multidimensional scaling analysis revealed two dimensions underlying the “pleasing” and “interest” judgments. These were identified by regressing the individual scale ratings against the dimensions. The “interest” dimensions, complexity/meaningfulness and familiarity, are comparable to motivational dimensions predicted by Berlyne: curiosity and variation. The “pleasing” dimensions, emotional arousal and aesthetic effectance, have been anticipated in the literature. Thematic content and date of the painting (modern versus pre-1850) could also be related to the dimensions. Individual differences in sensitivity to the “pleasing” dimensions were found primarily for naive and trained females.