The Experience of Time, Pleasure, and Interest during Aesthetic Episodes

Abstract

This study examined time estimations as well as ratings of pleasure and interest for aesthetic episodes varying in duration. It was hypothesized that judgments of exposure duration would reflect the amount of perceptual/cognitive effort needed to appreciate a painting. Effortful processing would lead to overestimation of duration, and automatic or overlearned analysis would produce underestimation. The experiment also examined changes in aesthetic pleasure and interest as a function of exposure duration and stylistic properties of the paintings. Sixteen trained and sixteen naive subjects, including equal numbers of males and females, viewed two sets of paintings varying in collative and stylistic properties for 18, 36 and 72 seconds. The Collative Set of twelve paintings represented two dimensions, Uncertainty and Arousal potential. The Stylistic Set of twelve paintings comprised two dimensions, Representational—Abstract and Linear (hard edge)—Painterly (soft edge). The results for judgment of duration supported the hypothesis. Trained subjects, who possess a repertoire of skills for appreciating paintings, generally underestimated exposure duration. Naive subjects, for whom art appreciation represents an effortful challenge, overestimated duration, especially for the complex paintings. In addition, naive males and females showed opposite monotonic changes in pleasure ratings for the Stylistic Set of paintings. These findings were interpreted in the context of a theory about sex differences in perceptual style.