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Abstract
It is often assumed that works of art have the ability to elicit emotion in their observers. An emotional response to a visual stimulus can occur as early as 120 ms after stimulus onset, before object
categorisation can take place. This implies that emotions elicited by an artwork may depend in part
on bottom-up processing of its visual features (e.g., shape, colour, composition) and not just on object recognition or understanding of artistic style. We predicted that participants are able to judge
the emotion conveyed by an artwork in a manner that is consistent across observers. We tested this
hypothesis using abstract paintings; these do not provide any reference to objects or narrative contexts, so that any perceived emotion must stem from basic visual characteristics. Nineteen participants
with no background in art rated 340 abstract artworks from different artistic movements on valence
and arousal on a Likert scale. An intra-class correlation model showed a high consistency in ratings
across observers. Importantly, observers used the whole range of the rating scale. Artworks with a
high number of edges (complex) and dark colours were rated as more arousing and more negative
compared to paintings containing clear lines, bright colours and geometric shapes. These findings
provide evidence that emotions can be captured in a meaningful way by the artist in a set of low-level
visual characteristics, and that observers interpret this emotional message in a consistent, uniform
manner.
Keywords
Aesthetic experience, perception, emotion, aesthetic viewing
DOI:10.1163/22134913-00002012
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1. Introduction
It is often assumed that works of art have the ability to elicit emotion in
their observers, and indeed, people often ascribe emotional valence to artworks (Cskszentmihlyi and Robinson, 1990). However, little is known as
to whether artworks are able to induce similar, shared emotions in spectators
(comparable to, for example, the response to an emotional face), or whether
observers experience a divergent range of emotions when viewing the same
artwork (rendering the experience of the artwork purely subjective). A comprehensive theory of emotion perception would need to take into account this
affective response to visual art, music and other stimuli. Here, we start by
investigating whether there are commonalities in emotional responses to abstract artworks or whether instead, there is truth in the old adage that theres
no accounting for taste when it comes to art.
We begin by discussing the neuropsychological basis underlying emotional
and aesthetic experiences. We then consider why it is plausible that at least
some aspects of the experience of emotions conveyed by artworks may be
homogenous across observers. Next we will present theories from artists and
art historians regarding the ways in which art, in particular abstract paintings,
might evoke emotion. Finally, we present our hypotheses regarding emotional
cues in abstract artworks and explain how we mean to test these empirically.
1.1. The Role of Emotion in Aesthetic Perception
Art has the power to disturb us, agitate us, or make us weep (Ellis, 1999,
p. 163). But how is an artwork able to trigger such a response, and when in
the viewing process do these emotions occur? Inherent to it being a visual
stimulus, it follows that visual art must initially be processed based on early
visual properties (e.g., shape, colour) in the primary visual areas within the
occipital cortex. An emotional response to a visual stimulus (e.g., a face) can
occur as early as 120 ms after stimulus onset (Pizzagalli et al., 1999, 2002),
before object categorisation can take place. Barrett and Bar (2009) have suggested that before object recognition takes place, gist-level visual information
(in the case of a visual artwork this could include low spatial frequency information, colour and some aspects of composition) engages fronto-parietal
attention circuits, which in turn relay affective information about the stimulus
back to the dorsal stream as an initial estimate of its affective and motivational
value. Heightened attention to a given stimulus then modulates object recognition within the ventral stream (e.g., Pessoa et al., 2003; Shulman et al., 1997)
and allows for the stimulus to be experienced more vividly. Thus, this affective
information guides our vision.
The notion that emotional responses already occur during the very first
stages of vision implies that emotions elicited by an artwork may depend at
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least in part on bottom-up processing of its visual features such as shape and
colour, in addition to higher cognitive processes such as object recognition or
understanding of artistic style (for review, see Melcher and Cavanagh, 2011).
Abstract artworks provide an interesting case study for attempts to understand
perception of emotion in artworks. Contrary to most artistic movements, abstract art is a category that defines paintings which do not intend to give a
faithful imitation of visual reality. There are no recognizable objects or contexts that could evoke emotion, in contrast to most of the existing studies
of emotion expression. In this sense, the emotional response to abstract artworks might be compared to that of music, where explicit reference to real
objects or scenes is rare (Blood and Zatorre, 2001; for review, see Koelsch,
2010; Melcher and Zampini, 2011). Since most of what we know about visual
emotion perception is based on studies of responses to stimuli like faces and
photographs, abstract artworks provide a unique and valuable stimulus set for
studying perception of emotion in visual stimuli.
Indeed, many artists have claimed that their abstract artworks are, in the
words of Jackson Pollock, expressing . . . feelings rather than illustrating
(OConnor, 1967, p. 79). Mark Rothko argued that his works expressed basic human emotions . . . tragedy, ecstasy, doom (Baal-Teshuva, 2003, p. 56).
As described below in more detail, artists have in many cases provided specific, testable claims about how and why their works evoke these emotions.
Implicit in most of these claims is the idea that there are commonalities in the
emotional response of different viewers of abstract artworks. Thus, in addition
to more narrative or top-down influences on emotion perception for artworks,
visual properties such as colour and form, which are dominant in abstract art
but also important in representational art, may play a role in the emotional
response to some artworks.
Some evidence for agreement when it comes to the emotion expressed by
abstract art comes from a study showing that children were able to correctly
match one of two abstract paintings to a representational target painting in
terms of conveyed emotion (Blank et al., 1984). This indicates that even young
children have the ability to detect emotion in an artwork, despite probably not
having a very developed concept of artistic style. A different study, also including (preschool) children, has shown that children as young as three are able to
distinguish different artistic styles (Hasenfus et al., 1983), which suggests that
nave observers tend to decode or understand works of art at a deeper level
than might be assumed (p. 861). A behavioural study comparing representational and indeterminate art (paintings which contain strong suggestions of
natural shapes, but no actual formal objects) found no difference in scores reflecting how much the artworks affected participants emotionally (Ishai et al.,
2007). The authors concluded that emotional and aesthetic judgments (which
were comparable for representational and indeterminate artworks) appeared
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103
Figure 1. Depiction of the historical developments in art leading to two main tendencies in
abstract art. From Albert H. Barr Jrs exhibition catalogue for the MoMA show Cubism and
Abstract Art (1936). This figure is published in color in the online version.
uses elements chosen for their symbolic and subjective value. Gauguin and the
Fauve artists chose to represent reality through non-imitative colours, in order
to augment the symbolic content of their paintings. The Expressionists and
Futurists exploited colours expressive potential, and the Dada and Surrealist
artists incorporated chance effects of doodling marks, which were believed
to stem from a persons unconscious. Non-Geometrical abstract art can thus
be characterised by the presence of fluid curved lines and sweeping strokes,
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105
(A)
(B)
Figure 2. (A) Examples of Abstract Expressionism works (Hans Hartung T 1963-H13, 1963;
and Antonio Corpora Notturno, 1952). (B) Examples of Geometric Abstraction works (Aldo
Schmid No title (from the Sequenze cycle), 19651966; and Luigi Senesi Percorsocromatico (verde-rosso), 1974).
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of a composition of different paintings, if they depicted an actual figure or object, if there were any letters or numbers (or signs that appeared as such) on the
painting, if they displayed formal characteristics belonging to both categories,
or if there was a three-dimensional object attached to the painting.
To obtain some uniformity in size of the stimuli without distorting the original proportions of the paintings, the largest dimension on each painting was
resized to 600 pixels; the smaller dimension was then resized in relation to
that. Paintings were shown on a Toshiba Satellite Pro L500-1VZ laptop using
NBS Presentation software (version 16.0, www.neurobs.com).
2.3. Measures
For the rating task, participants were required to rate each artwork on one of
two dimensions: Arousal (ranging from calm to excited) and Valence (ranging
from sad to happy), in a fashion similar to the instructions given to participants
who rated pictures for the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang
et al., 2008). There was one question per trial, so that each painting was viewed
twice in total (one viewing per question). The order of the questions (Arousal
or Valence) and paintings was randomised.
Following the example of the IAPS, in the instructions provided at the
start of the experiment, the Arousal dimension was explained as the extent
to which the painting made participants feel stimulated, excited, frenzied, jittery, wide-awake, aroused, or rather completely relaxed, calm, sluggish, dull,
sleepy, unaroused. During the actual experiment, we only presented the labels
calm and excited. The Arousal scale consisted of five figures taken from
the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM; Hodes et al., 1985) that depicted a little man ranging from eyes closed (calm) to exploding with eyes wide open
(excited). The Valence dimension was explained as the extent to which each
painting made subjects feel happy, pleased, satisfied, contented, hopeful, or on
the other end of the scale, completely unhappy, annoyed, unsatisfied, melancholic, despaired. Again, during the actual experiment we only presented the
simplified labels sad and happy. The Valence scale consisted of five faces
from the WongBaker faces pain scale (Wong and Baker, 1988). The faces
were similar to cartoon style smiley faces and ranged from an inverted Ushape mouth and hanging eyebrows (sad) to a big smile with raised eyebrows
(happy).
The rating scale was depicted on the screen, and pictures of each rating
option were attached to buttons on the keyboard using five buttons to the right
of the U key and five buttons to the right of the J key. The position of
the two rating scales (top row or bottom row of keys) was counterbalanced
between participants.
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2.4. Procedure
All participants performed a practice run with a different subset of paintings
before engaging in the actual experiment. Each trial started with a fixation
cross (500 ms) along with printed information on the dimension that the participant would be rating the painting on. For Arousal, it said calm/excited
and for Valence it said sad/happy. A painting was then shown for 2000 ms.
During this presentation no rating could be made. Immediately following presentation, a screen appeared with the word rating and the appropriate scale.
Participants were instructed to make their response as fast as possible and not
to think too long about their response. There was a 1000 ms blank screen before the start of the next trial. The experiment was self-paced and lasted about
50 min, depending on the speed with which participants gave their rating.
3. Results
3.1. Rating Consistency
Rating scores were first converted to standardised z-scores to correct for any
bias in rating across subjects. In order to assess whether participants rated the
paintings in a consistent way, we analysed the standardised rating scores from
each participant for each painting using a two-way random effects intra-class
correlation (ICC) model to test consistency for each dimension separately.
The ICC coefficient for Valence was very high (ICC = 0.845; 95% CI =
0.820.87), suggesting a consistent pattern of valence ratings for different
paintings across participants. Consistency in valence rating was slightly higher
for AbEx paintings (ICC = 0.844; 95% CI = 0.800.88) than for Geom paintings (ICC = 0.786; 95% CI = 0.730.83). The ICC coefficient for Arousal
was also high (ICC = 0.854; 95% CI = 0.830.88). In contrast to the valence
ratings, ratings for arousal were more consistent for Geom paintings (ICC =
0.866; 95% CI = 0.830.90) than for AbEx paintings (ICC = 0.757; 95%
CI = 0.700.81).
To test whether the consistency in scores does not simply reflect a vast
amount of neutral ratings, we calculated the frequency of the mean rating
awarded to each artwork. These results are summarised in Table 1. Frequency
tables showed that about 50% of the AbEx and 30% of Geom artworks received a mean Valence rating that was either lower than 2.5 (sad) or higher
than 3.5 (happy). On the Arousal dimension, 38% of AbEx paintings and
60% of Geom paintings received scores that clearly reflected calm or excited. This means that especially with regards to the Valence ratings for the
Geom artworks, the majority of artworks was rated as neutral. To check that
the consistency was not merely driven by these neutral ratings, we repeated the
intraclass correlation but excluded the neutrally rated artworks from the anal-
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Table 1.
Number of paintings with mean high, neutral, and low Arousal and Valence ratings. AbEx:
Abstract Expressionism; Geom: Geometric Abstraction
Mean rating
Low (<2.5)
Neutral (2.53.5)
High (>3.5)
Valence
Arousal
AbEx
Geom
AbEx
Geom
75
85
10
18
120
32
22
105
43
86
69
15
yses. Consistency in ratings remained high for both Valence (AbEx: ICC =
0.749; 95% CI = 0.660.83; Geom: ICC = 0.895; 95% CI = 0.840.94) and
Arousal (AbEx: ICC = 0.871; 95% CI = 0.820.92; Geom: ICC = 0.910;
95% CI = 0.880.94).
3.2. Differences Between the Two Art Types
To explore whether there were differences in ratings between AbEx and Geom
paintings, standardised ratings were entered into a repeated measures analysis of variance using Art Type (AbEx, Geom) as a between-group factor
and Dimension (Arousal, Valence) as a within-group factor. There was a significant interaction between Art Type and Dimension (F (1, 338) = 238.149,
p < 0.001). No other effects were found. A follow-up independent samples
t-test showed that AbEx paintings were rated as significantly more negative
(mean raw score 2.69 0.54; note that raw scores are used in the text for
meaningfulness; for the analyses standardised z-scores were used) than Geom
paintings (mean raw score 3.17 0.44) (t (338) = 8.978, p < 0.001). Geom
paintings were rated as significantly more calm (mean raw score 2.53 0.64)
(t (338) = 8.519, p < 0.001) than AbEx paintings (mean raw score 3.09
0.49). Figure 3 illustrates these results.
There was a highly significant positive relationship between standardised
ratings for valence and arousal for Geom paintings (r = 0.547, p < 0.001), as
well as for AbEx paintings (r = 0.177, p = 0.021).
To see whether AbEx and Geom paintings differed significantly in terms
of basic visual features, we compared saturation (vividness of colour, where
lower saturation colours contain more grey), brightness (luminance; or the
black/white quality), and complexity (as assessed by an index of the number of
edges detected in each artwork) in an independent samples t-test. Assumptions
for equality of the variances were not met for all three features; hence the degrees of freedom were adjusted. AbEx and Geom paintings did not differ significantly on saturation (t (316.565) = 1.914, p = 0.168 (Bonferroni corrected
for multiple comparisons); mean saturation AbEx: 31.18% 17.06; mean sat-
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Figure 3. Mean standardised ratings for Arousal and Valence for 340 paintings. AbEx: Abstract
Expressionism; Geom: Geometric Abstraction. This figure is published in color in the online
version.
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more arousing the more complex (r = 0.330, p < 0.001) and dark they were
(r = 0.183, p = 0.019), but we found no significant correlation between
arousal ratings and saturation (r = 0.083, p = 0.288). Interestingly, a different pattern was found for Geom artworks: these were rated more positively
the brighter they were (r = 0.503, p < 0.001), while there was no relation
between valence ratings and saturation (r = 0.064, p = 0.406) or complexity (r = 0.145, p = 0.058). On the other hand, arousal ratings were higher
for more colourful and complex paintings (saturation: r = 0.204, p = 0.008;
complexity: r = 0.230, p = 0.002) whereas no significant correlation existed
between arousal ratings and brightness (r = 0.085, p = 0.268).
4. Discussion
The current study obtained valence and arousal ratings for a large set of abstract artworks. We hypothesised that observers who are nave to art are able to
pick up emotion conveyed by abstract artworks in a consistent manner. Indeed
we found highly consistent ratings on both valence and arousal for artworks
from Abstract Expressionism and Geometric Abstraction, suggesting that the
artworks evoked common emotional processes across observers. Importantly,
observers placed artworks consistently along either dimension, showing that
the agreement in scoring is not simply due to all works being rated as neutral.
We also explored whether there were differences in ratings between the two
art movements. Overall, ratings were more positive and calm for paintings belonging to Geometric Abstraction compared to Abstract Expressionism, which
were judged as sadder and more exciting.
Because our participants were nave to art, they were not able to base their
valence and arousal judgments on anything other than the basic visual features
presented to them by an artwork. Given that the artworks bear no reference to
real-life objects, we pose that an emotional response to such stimuli is based to
a large part on bottom-up visual features. Similar ideas have been proposed by
some of the artists producing art these artworks, and indeed affective reactions
have been reported previously for single visual stimuli such as simple geometric shapes (e.g., Larson et al., 2007, 2011) and colours (e.g., Kaya and Epps,
2004; Moller et al., 2009; Ou et al., 2004). However, to date there is little empirical evidence for consistent affective reactions across different observers in
response to visual art. Many models of aesthetic viewing emphasise the individuality of aesthetic experiences and affective reactions to art these are
regarded as the interplay between an observer and the situation (e.g., Jacobsen
et al., 2006; Leder et al., 2004). Our findings complement studies of the role
of context and top-down factors by showing also the existence of a consistent
interpretation of emotion for abstract artworks by nave participants.
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2004) information. They also found that brighter yellow, blue and red were
associated with positive emotions, while dark colours were related to negative
emotions. In the current study, the Geom artworks as a set were brighter than
the AbEx artworks, which received more sad ratings. This is in line with the
study by Yanulevskaya and colleagues, who found that darker colours were
predictive of a negative rating.
Another possibility for the difference in ratings between the two art streams
is that the presence of clearly discernible shapes in the Geom artworks may
have resulted in more well-defined uniform planes. As described above, a classifier trained on form and texture features (SIFT) was able to predict whether
human judgments of the emotion of an abstract artwork were positive or negative (Yanulevskaya et al., 2012). It has been previously demonstrated that
when using simple geometric shapes, people prefer stimuli with a high figureground contrast, presumably because this facilitates processing fluency (Reber
et al., 2004). Reber and colleagues further argue that stimuli with less information are more pleasing to the observer, again because this is easier to
process. The finding that Geom artworks were on average brighter and less
complex than AbEx artworks may indicate that Geom paintings contain more
large contrasting sections. Complexity was assessed using an index of edge
detection; AbEx paintings were found to contain more edges and were thus
more fragmented, containing more angles than Geom paintings. An earlier
study demonstrated that people preferred large abstract geometrical shapes and
characters over smaller versions of the same stimulus, supposedly because biologically speaking larger specimens convey a sense of power, attractiveness,
and physical strength (Silvera et al., 2002).
Bar and Neta (2006) showed that if given a choice, people prefer the rounder
version of neutral everyday objects (a sofa, a watch, and so on). They attributed this to a potential sense of threat that is conveyed by sharp angles.
This sense of threat is even conveyed by simple geometric shapes such as
triangles, a finding that was traced back to threatening facial features such
as downward pointing eyebrows in an angry face (Aronoff, 2006; Larson et
al., 2007). A downward pointing triangle was perceived as particularly threatening, as expressed by heightened brain activity in the amygdala (Larson et
al., 2009), a subcortical structure involved in basic emotional processing and
threat detection (e.g., LeDoux, 2000; Vuilleumier et al., 2003). Larson and colleagues (2009) pointed out that circles, one of the control stimuli in their study,
were not threatening but elicited greater activation in visual processing areas
compared to other geometric shapes and thus can be regarded as more potent
and salient visual stimuli. Similarly, statistical patterns in abstract paintings
corresponding to straight lines and smooth curves were associated with positive emotions while chaotic patterns were associated with negative emotions,
even if these arrays appeared in positive colours (Yanulevskaya et al., 2012).
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However, there is a limit to the role of bottom-up features like shape, since topdown factors must play an important role in judging the emotional content of
an object or scene. For example, objects that were round but carried a negative
valence (e.g., a bomb, or a snake) were not preferred over negative sharp objects (Leder et al., 2011). Round objects were only preferred over sharp angles
if their valence was neutral or positive, showing that object associations also
play an important role in emotion perception. Similarly, it is unlikely that the
ratings of the IAPS pictures is determined largely by bottom-up visual cues,
but instead depends on recognition of specific objects and situations.
Overall, the idea that visual characteristics such as brightness, low visual
complexity, and round shape tend to be regarded as more positive may help to
explain why participants in our study were so consistent in their higher happy and calm ratings for the Geom artworks compared to AbEx artworks.
As shown in the study by Yanulevskaya and colleagues (2012), at least some
of the visual features in abstract artworks are basic enough that they can be
used by computational vision algorithms to predict human emotion ratings.
Thus, although the identity of objects and other forms of top-down knowledge
undoubtedly influence emotional responses, artists are also able to manipulate
basic visual features such as colour, shape and brightness in order to modulate
the respone of viewers.
4.2. Limitations of the Current Study and Directions for Future Research
Although consistency in ratings in the current study was high even when the
neutrally rated paintings were excluded from the analysis, it should be noted
that a large proportion of the Geometric Abstraction artworks (70%) was rated
as neutral. This could be the result of the particular artworks that we selected,
but it may also suggests that for this set of artworks perhaps the happysad
scale was not the best possible dimension to assess affective responses (as a
comparison, on the calmexcited scale, less than half (40%) of the Geom
artworks received a neutral rating). One aim of the current study was to test
the feasibility of developing a dataset of abstract artworks, similar to the International Affection Picture Scale (Lang et al., 2008), for use in studying the
neural correlates of emotional responses to a range of visual stimuli such as
faces, pictures and abstract paintings. The valence and arousal measures allow for making such direct comparisons, but future research could consider a
wider spectrum of emotions and obtain ratings for different facets of emotion.
For example, a study investigating emotions evoked by music, Zentner et al.
(2008) identified nine factors, each including two or more items. For example,
agitated and nervous relate to the factor tension, while energetic and
fiery relate to the factor power. Moreover, this study took into account ratings for perceived and felt emotion, i.e., what emotion was expressed by the
music, and what emotion was felt by the subject. An open question for future
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