Aesthetic emotion and implicit evaluation

From the broad field of the aesthetic emotion we take into consideration aspects that refer to diffuse positive and negative emotions related to the preference of two different artistic styles (figurative and abstract art). Several researches, employing direct measures, show a general preference for figurative pictures compared to abstract ones. Our hypothesis is that a preference toward figurative art compared to abstract art will be shown also using implicit measurements.We used the Implicit Association Test (IAT) which is a method to indirectly measure the strengths of association among concepts.We select 20 pictures (10 figurative and 10 abstract) and 20 words (10 with a positive aesthetic meaning and 10 with a negative meaning).Participants (N=20) task consists on classifying stimuli (pictures and words) into four categories, using only two response options. The logic of IAT is that this sorting task should be easier when the two concepts that share a response are strongly associated (figurative/positive and abstract/negative) than when they are weakly associated (figurative/negative – abstract/positive).As predicted, compatible task (figurative/positive - abstract/negative) was faster than incompatible task (figurative/negative - abstract/positive), respectively 684 ms vs. 840 ms (t (19), -4.038, p = .001). More errors were made on incompatible task (N=36) than on compatible task (n=11; t(19), -2.763, p = .012).These preliminary results are in line with the hypothesis that also the aesthetic evaluation can be activated automatically. Results show that participants have a clear preference towards figurative art. According to Martindale, the preference for a work of art would be determined from the “typicality” perceived, with the most prototypical (figurative art) being the most preferred. Another reason can be attributed to the major “familiarity” of the figurative art compared to the abstract one.