A Dynamic Spatial Analysis of Changes in Aesthetic Responses

Abstract

Models of evaluative judgment in applied aesthetics generally assume that movements of objects' positions in a multidimensional perceptual space will produce corresponding changes in preferences. However, such spatial representations have usually been tested using static designs or, at best, longitudinal studies that fail to tie perceptual movements to shifts in affective response. This study reports what we believe to be a first dynamic analysis of changes in aesthetic responses. Specifically, twenty-nine aesthetically naive subjects supplied perceptual and affective ratings of twenty art prints on four occasions spaced a week apart. Multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) of the perception data created an MDA space representing each person's perceptions of each print at the beginning and end of the period. We then constructed each individual's preference function based on the MDA space, used beginning and ending perceived positions to compute changes in that preference function, regarded these as predictions of changes in actual affect, and correlated predicted with actual affective shifts to obtain a validity assessment of about r² = .25 for our dynamic spatial analysis of trends in tastes.