The title effect in the appreciation of Japanese poetry: Quantifying the semantic relevance between titles and poems

This study examined whether the relationship between a Japanese poem and its title is associated with the aesthetic experience of poetry. We used Word2Vec to calculate title-poem relevance scores and construct high-relevance, low-relevance, and control (untitled) conditions. In an online experiment, 220 participants were recruited, of whom 194 were included in the final analysis after exclusions. The participants read tanka poems under these three conditions and rated each poem on Liking, Beauty, Understanding, and Imagery. The results partially supported our hypothesis. Ratings for Liking, Understanding, and Imagery were significantly lower in the low-relevance condition than in both the high-relevance and control conditions. However, no significant differences were found between the high-relevance and control conditions for any dimension. Additionally, for negative poems, the high-relevance condition was associated with higher Imagery ratings than the low-relevance condition, whereas no such difference emerged for positive poems. These findings do not indicate a general advantage of high-relevance titles over the absence of a title. Rather, they suggest that low-relevance titles may be associated with lower aesthetic ratings, whereas high-relevance titles and untitled poems may support appreciation to a similar degree. Given the small effect sizes, these findings should be interpreted as modest associations. This study extends research on title effects in paintings to literature and highlights the potential usefulness of computational linguistic methods for quantifying title-poem relatedness. By providing an objective and reproducible approach to stimulus construction, it offers a methodological basis for future research on title effects in literary appreciation.