Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
In this experiment inexperienced observers ( N = 22) scored 40 black‐and‐white slides of cubist paintings on a number of seven‐point rating scales. On the basis of the time it took subjects to identify the depicted human figure, these slides were divided into three subgroups of Low Categorizability (LC), Intermediate Categorizability (IC) and High Categorizability (HC), respectively. For the LC slides ‘beauty’ scores revealed an inverted U‐shaped relation with ‘complexity’. No significant relation between these two variables could be demonstrated, however, for the HC slides. ‘Beauty’ ratings of the latter stimuli increased linearly with the degree of prototypicality. For the IC slides ‘beauty’ showed a (nearly significant) inverted U‐shaped relation to ‘complexity’, as well as a significant linear relation to ‘prototypicality’. The results of this study suggest that, whereas ‘complexity’ determines aesthetic preference for abstract paintings, ‘prototypicality’ determines preference for representational works.
Hekkert et al. (Thu,) studied this question.