There is evidence that greater aesthetic experience can be linked to artworks when their corresponding meanings can be successfully inferred and understood. Modern cultural-expo architecture can be considered a form of artistic creation and design, and the corresponding design philosophy may be derived from representational objects or abstract social meanings. The present study investigates whether cultural-expo architecture with an easy-to-understand architectural appearance design is perceived as more beautiful and how architectural photographs and different types of descriptions of architectural appearance designs interact and produce higher aesthetic evaluations. The results showed an obvious aesthetic preference for cultural-expo architecture with an easy-to-understand architectural appearance design (Experiment 1). Moreover, we found that the aesthetic rating score of architectural photographs accompanied by an abstract description was significantly higher than that of those accompanied by a representational description only under the difficult-to-understand design condition (Experiment 2). The results indicated that people preferred cultural-expo architecture with an easy-to-understand architectural appearance design due to a greater understanding of the design, providing further evidence that abstract descriptions can provide supplementary information and explanation to enhance the sense of beauty of abstract cultural-expo architecture.
BelkeB.LederH.StrobachT.CarbonC. C. (2010). Cognitive fluency: High-level processing dynamics in art appreciation. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 4(4), 214–222. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019648
2.
BerlyneD. E. (1970). Novelty, complexity, and hedonic value. Perception & Psychophysics, 8(5), 279–286. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03212593
3.
BerlyneD. E. (1971). Aesthetics and psychobiology. : Appleton-Century-Crofts.
4.
ChatterjeeA. (2003). Prospects for a cognitive neuroscience of visual aesthetics. Bulletin of Psychology and the Arts, 4, 55–60. https://doi.org/10.1037/e514602010-003
5.
ChatterjeeA.WidickP.SternscheinR.SmithW. B.BrombergerB. (2010). The assessment of art attributes. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 28(2), 207–222. https://doi.org/10.2190/EM.28.2.f
6.
CoburnA.KardanO.KotabeH.SteinbergJ.HoutM. C.RobbinsA.MacDonaldJ.Hayn-LeichsenringG.BermanM. G. (2019). Psychological responses to natural patterns in architecture. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 62, 133–145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.02.007
7.
CoburnA.VartanianO.ChatterjeeA. (2017). Buildings, beauty, and the brain: A neuroscience of architectural experience. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29(9), 1521–1531. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01146
8.
CusackP.LankstonL.IslesC. (2010). Impact of visual art in patient waiting rooms: Survey of patients attending a transplant clinic in dumfries. JRSM Short Reports, 1(6), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1258/shorts.2010.010077
9.
FaerberS. J.LederH.GergerG.CarbonC. C. (2010). Priming semantic concepts affects the dynamics of aesthetic appreciation. Acta Psychologica, 135(2), 191–200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2010.06.006
10.
GergerG.LederH. (2015). Titles change the esthetic appreciations of paintings. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, 464. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00464
11.
GergerG.LederH.KremerA. (2014). Context effects on emotional and aesthetic evaluations of artworks and IAPS pictures. Acta Psychologica, 151, 174–183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.06.008
12.
GrafL. K.LandwehrJ. R. (2015). A dual-process perspective on fluency-based aesthetics: The pleasure-interest model of aesthetic liking. Personality and Social Psychology Review : An Official Journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc, 19(4), 395–410. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868315574978
13.
GrafL. K.MayerS.LandwehrJ. R. (2018). Measuring processing fluency: One versus five items. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 28(3), 393–411. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1021
14.
HekkertP.WieringenP. C. W. (1990). Complexity and prototypicality as determinants of the appraisal of cubist paintings. British Journal of Psychology, 81(4), 483–495. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1990.tb02374.x
JacobsenT.HöfelL. E. A. (2002). Aesthetic judgments of novel graphic patterns: Analyses of individual judgments. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 95(3 Pt 1), 755–766. https://doi.org/10.2466/PMS.95.7.755-766
17.
KirkU.SkovM.HulmeO.ChristensenM. S.ZekiS. (2009). Modulation of aesthetic value by semantic context: An fMRI study. NeuroImage, 44(3), 1125–1132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.10.009
18.
LederH.BelkeB.OeberstA.AugustinD. (2004). A model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments. British Journal of Psychology (London, England : 1953), 95(Pt 4), 489–508. https://doi.org/10.1348/0007126042369811
19.
LederH.CarbonC. C.RipsasA. L. (2006). Entitling art: Influence of title information on understanding and appreciation of paintings. Acta Psychologica, 121(2), 176–198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2005.08.005
20.
MillisK. (2001). Making meaning brings pleasure: The influence of titles on aesthetic experiences. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 1(3), 320–329. https://doi.org/10.1037//1528-3542.1.3.320
PihkoE.VirtanenA.SaarinenV.-M.PannaschS.HirvenkariL.TossavainenT.HaapalaA.HariR. (2011). Experiencing art: The influence of expertise and painting abstraction level. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 5, 94. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2011.00094
25.
ReberR.SchwarzN.WinkielmanP. (2004). Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in the perceiver’s processing experience?Personality and Social Psychology Review : An Official Journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc, 8(4), 364–382. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0804_3
26.
ReberR.WinkielmanP.SchwarzN. (1998). Effects of perceptual fluency on affective judgments. Psychological Science, 9(1), 45–48. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00008
27.
ReberR.WurtzP.ZimmermannT. D. (2004). Exploring “fringe” consciousness: The subjective experience of perceptual fluency and its objective bases. Consciousness and Cognition, 13(1), 47–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8100(03)00049-7
28.
RussellP. A. (2003). Effort after meaning and the hedonic value of paintings. British Journal of Psychology (London, England: 1953), 94(Pt 1), 99–110. https://doi.org/10.1348/000712603762842138
29.
SwamiV. (2013). Context matters: Investigating the impact of contextual information on aesthetic appreciation of paintings by Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 7(3), 285–295. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030965
30.
VesselE. A.RubinN. (2010). Beauty and the beholder: Highly individual taste for abstract, but not real-world images. Journal of Vision, 10(2), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1167/10.2.18
31.
ZhangW.TangX.HeX.ChenG. (2018). Evolutionary effect on the embodied beauty of landscape architectures. Evolutionary Psychology: An International Journal of Evolutionary Approaches to Psychology and Behavior, 16(1), 1474704917749742–1474704917749749. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474704917749742
32.
ZhangW.TangX.HeX.LaiS. (2018). Attentional bias to beauty with evolutionary benefits: Evidence from aesthetic appraisal of landscape architecture. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 71. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00071
