No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
“Humans prefer curved visual objects”
Abstract
People constantly make snap judgments about objects encountered in the environment. Such rapid judgments must be based on the physical properties of the targets, but the nature of these properties is yet unknown. We hypothesized that sharp transitions in contour might convey a sense of threat, and therefore trigger a negative bias. Our results were consistent with this hypothesis. The type of contour a visual object possesses--whether the contour is sharp angled or curved--has a critical influence on people's attitude toward that object.
... To date, available research emphasizes the importance of shape concerning its influence on consumer reactions (e.g., Liu et al., 2018;Maimaran & Wheeler, 2008;Zhu & Argo, 2013), yet it primarily considered consumers' esthetic preferences, cognitive associations, and basic sensory reactions. For example, research in esthetic and psychology has found that people generally prefer round shapes as a consequence of evolved fear response (e.g., Bar & Neta, 2006Westerman et al., 2012) and cultural learning experiences (for a review, see Gómez-Puerto et al., 2016). Recent studies on logo design, communication, and service provision also focused mainly on the relationship between shape and mental associations (Jiang et al., 2015), information quality (Kim, 2017), and sensory reactions (Liu et al., 2018), calling for an in-depth investigation of whether and why food shapes impact preference and behaviors. ...
... Drawing on previous work on the shape effect (e.g., Bar & Neta, 2006;Jiang et al., 2015), food consumption (e.g., Li et al., 2020;Yamim et al., 2020), and the affect-as-information framework (e.g., Luangrath et al., 2020;Pham, 2004;Schwarz & Clore, 2007), we propose that consumers are more likely to prefer food that is hedonic in nature if it has a round shape. We argue that this shape effect occurs because round shapes elicit a more positive affect, thereby providing directional affective information for consumers' preferences and decisions. ...
... Although many shapes exist in terms of the curvature of lines and the sharpness of corners, shapes can be classified mainly as round, angular, or a combination of the two (Jiang et al., 2015). This classification is widely accepted by numerous marketing, esthetic, psychological, and communication studies (e.g., Bar & Neta, 2006Li et al., 2020;Wang et al., 2020). Round shapes, such as circles and ellipses, are defined as those that are curved and without pointed features. ...
Despite being a fundamental food feature, the effect of food shapes has been underexplored. This study demonstrates that giving hedonic foods a round shape increases their desirability, choice probability, and consumption. However, this effect does not apply to utilitarian foods. Such asymmetric effects are attributed to the positive affect elicited by a round shape and not to the food's shape typicality, food knowledge, vividness, or fragility. The positive affect provides affective information and influences consumers' judgments and decisions. Moreover, the effectiveness of giving hedonic foods a round shape is attenuated by consumers' health motivations; that is, the effect holds only for those with low health motivation. Applying statistical methods to data from seven independent studies provided consistent evidence that supports our hypotheses, thereby advancing knowledge of the shape effect, susceptibility of hedonic products, and the affect-as-information framework, while also revealing how food shapes affect food consumption.
... Rather, in-depth studies on this topic have revealed preferences converging on prototypical geometric shapes (McManus, 1980;McManus & Weatherby, 1997) and on compact triangular shapes (Friedenberg, 2012). In terms of shape contour, a robust preference for curvature relative to angularity has been found for abstract geometric shapes, real-life objects and environments (Bar & Neta, 2006;Palumbo et al., 2015Palumbo et al., , 2020Vartanian et al., 2013), a preference which has found to be reliable in cross-cultural research (Gómez-Puerto et al., 2016). The origin of a preference for curvature remains a debate in the literature. ...
... The origin of a preference for curvature remains a debate in the literature. Some authors suggest it derives from optimal stimulation of the visual system via Gestalt principles such as good continuation , while other researchers argue that a preference for curvature derives from an evolutionary adaptive avoidance of sharp stimuli (Bar & Neta, 2006), Extending out from preference for proportion and contour of singular forms, Arnheim (1965) referred to the tension inherent in the configuration of forms, even in a stimulus as simple as a circle within a frame ( Figure 1). Arnheim posited that observers prefer specific compositional arrangements that ensure balance and preserve meaning. ...
... Under its revised conception, aesthetic sensitivity is the extent to which a particular objective feature (symmetry, contour, complexity) influences an observer's aesthetic valuation. Empirical support for the existence of aesthetic sensitivity was derived from a study which reexamined stimuli from a seminal study on curvature preference (Bar & Neta, 2006) and found both group-level preference for curvature as well as large individual differences, across two different stimulus categories (real objects and abstract designs; Corradi et al. 2019). A follow-up study using a larger range of stimuli again found evidence for high variability in preference for curvature, symmetry, complexity and balance in visual stimuli (Corradi et al. 2020). ...
The field of empirical aesthetics sets out to understand and predict our aesthetic preferences (Palmer et al., Annual Review of Psychology 64(1):77–107, 2013). Its history dates back to the birth of visual psychophysics and the work of Gustav Fechner (Vorschule der aesthetik (Vol. 1). Brietkopf & Härtel, 1876), while multiple models of aesthetic experience have been proposed in the intervening years (Chatterjee A, Vartanian O, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 18(7):370–375, 2014; Leder H et al., British Journal of Psychology 95(4):489–508, 2004; Pelowski M et al., Physics of Life Reviews 21:80–125, 2017). This chapter briefly sets out the history of empirical aesthetics, and the state of the research field at present. I outline recent work on inter-observer agreement in aesthetic preference, before presenting empirical work that argues the importance of first objective (characteristics of stimuli) and then subjective (characteristics of context) factors in shaping aesthetic preference. Considering the role of properties of the stimulus, I will review literature on the relationship between aesthetic preference and symmetry, shape, compositional structure, colour and complexity as well as considering the potential role of statistical properties of images. I will then review putative subjective predictors of aesthetic preference including the role of context, framing and the influence of information about the artist and the artistic process. Both subjective and objective approaches will be evaluated from an individual differences perspective, focusing on the mediating role of familiarity, expertise, culture, cognitive ability and personality. Finally, I will attempt to draw these approaches together with reference to aesthetic sensitivity: an individual observer’s propensity to have an aesthetic response to a particular objective image characteristic, and will explore some putative factors that may modulate and explain individual differences in aesthetic sensitivity.
... People tend to associate angular shapes with attributes such as hard, harsh, and masculine while associating round shapes with attributes such as soft, mild, and feminine (e.g., Blazhenkova & Kumar, 2018;Liu & Kennedy, 1997;Lundholm, 1921). In addition, numerous studies have demonstrated a general tendency to prefer round over angular shapes (Bar & Neta, 2006Blazhenkova & Kumar, 2018;Gómez-Puerto et al., 2016;Larson et al., 2009;Palumbo et al., 2015;Wang et al., 2020;Westerman et al., 2012). A bias to prefer round shapes has also been documented in 1-week-old infants (Fantz & Miranda, 1975) and even among nonhuman primates (Munar et al., 2015). ...
... Of particular relevance to the aims of the present study, studies reveal that people perceive angular (vs. round) shapes as less attractive and pleasing since angular shapes may induce a vague sense of threat (Bar & Neta, 2006Larson et al., 2009;Palumbo et al., 2015). For example, using human neuroimaging, Bar and Neta (2007) found that everyday sharp objects (such as a sofa with sharp corners) elicit significantly greater amygdala activation, which is involved in fear processing than do curved objects (e.g., a sofa with curved corners). ...
... Studies based on evolutionary psychology suggest that the preference for curvature appears to be universal and is unaffected by cultural differences (e.g., Bar & Neta, 2006;Fantz & Miranda, 1975;Gómez-Puerto et al., 2018;Munar et al., 2015). For example, Gómez-Puerto et al. (2018) have demonstrated that the preference for curved contours is also present in non-Western cultures such as in Ghana. ...
We investigate whether the typeface used to display the purchase amount in the context of mobile payment influences consumers’ awareness of spending. The evidence suggests that prices displayed in angular (vs. round) typeface increase the awareness of spending in the context of mobile payment via the perceived harshness of the typeface and the experienced pain of payment (Studies 1-3, 5, and 6). Angular (vs. round) typeface also has downstream consequences for payment behavior, indicating that the amount displayed with the angular typeface increases the hesitation to press the “pay” button (Studies 2 and 6). Our results also demonstrate that the typeface effect on the awareness of spending is moderated by the purchase amount (Study 3). The robust typeface effect documented for Japanese participants (Studies 1-3) is not observed in North Americans (Studies 4 and 5), highlighting the role of culture. Finally, we replicate the price typeface effect (Studies 1-3) in a situation that is closer to the context of real mobile shopping and demonstrate that price typeface impact people’s willingness to spend on the next grocery shop (Study 6). Our research contributes to the scarce literature on addressing the the profligacy
issues associated with mobile payments and broadly cashless payments.
... Subsequent studies have investigated the hypothesis that curved/rounded/curvilinear conditions are more appealing to humans than angular/edgy/rectilinear ones. This hypothesis has been shown to be correct using different types of visual stimuli including lines [14][15][16][17][18], font types [19,20], geometric shapes and simple forms [21][22][23][24], irregular shapes and meaningless patterns [3,4,16,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30], images of familiar objects [3,26,[31][32][33][34][35][36], sketches of familiar objects [33,37], in addition to sketches and images of designed products [38,39]. Different studies have found the effect to be present across species humans and apes [35], cultures-Western vs. non-Western [14,16,19,24,29,35,[38][39][40], and ages-toddlers [27] and infants [18,23]. ...
... However, the source of this preference is still under debate. Some researchers proposed that angularity conveys threat, suggesting that the preference reflects adaptive behavior [31,32]. Other research has attributed the observed effect to higher cognitive processes and susceptibility to the influence of semantic meaning and perceptual qualities that are not strictly limited to contour [35]. ...
... Those included both properties of the stimuli-e.g., complexity [22,24,[28][29][30]38], symmetry [24,36], balance [22,24], novelty/innovativeness [38], meaningfulness [26,29], typicality [38,39], familiarity [4,33], as well as individual differences of the perceivers-e.g., sex [3,27,30], expertise in art/design [3,4,24,33,38], academic degree [33], personality traits [3,22,33], cognitive styles [26], and neurological disorders such as autism [4,21,30], in an attempt to understand whether they affect or modulate contour perception. Different outcome measures have been used in previous studies, including forced-choice response [29,31,32], rating/visual analogue scales [4,16,[19][20][21][22]24,29,30,33,37,39], and selection procedures [26], in addition to more implicit measures, such as association [14,17,20,25,28] and approach-avoidance tasks [3,16,28,36], reaction and/or viewing time [18,22,26,27], and observed postural behavior [21]. With regard to contours in the indoor environment, similar effects were proposed by the scarce set of studies available until now. ...
There has been a recent interest in how architecture affects mental health and psychological well-being, motivated by the fact that we spend the majority of our waking time inside and interacting with built environments. Some studies have investigated the psychological responses to indoor design parameters; for instance, contours, and proposed that curved interiors, when compared to angular ones, were aesthetically preferred and induced higher positive emotions. The present study aimed to systematically examine this hypothesis and further explore the impact of contrasting contours on affect, behavior, and cognition. We exposed 42 participants to four well-matched indoor living rooms under a free-exploration photorealistic virtual reality paradigm. We included style as an explorative second-level variable. Out of the 33 outcome variables measured, and after correcting for false discoveries, only two eventually confirmed differences in the contours analysis, in favor of angular rooms. Analysis of style primarily validated the contrast of our stimulus set, and showed significance in one other dependent variable. Results of additional analysis using the Bayesian framework were in line with those of the frequentist approach. The present results provide evidence against the hypothesis that curvature is preferred, suggesting that the psychological response to contours in a close-to-reality architectural setting could be more complex. This study, therefore, helps to communicate a more complete scientific view on the experience of interior spaces and proposes directions for necessary future research.
... For both categories, preferences for curvy contour or roundness have been reported. For either familiar objects (e.g., sofa) or unfamiliar objects (e.g., abstract shapes or patterns), those with curvy shapes are consistently preferred compared with those with angular shapes (e.g., [7][8][9]). Likewise, rounder fonts are also consistently preferred over angular fonts (e.g., [10]). ...
... Likewise, rounder fonts are also consistently preferred over angular fonts (e.g., [10]). Remarkably, the preference for curvy rather than angular items does not appear to change when observers only see the images briefly (e.g., 84-300 ms, [2]) or until a response (e.g., [11]), and can be found across various tasks (e.g., making a binary like/dislike judgment, e.g., [7,11]; select a preferred item from a pair, or select a score on a preference rating scale, [11]). Although similar preferences for specific kinds of visual qualities, particularly curvy contour or roundness, have been observed for various categories, it remains unclear whether such visual qualities share similar processing mechanisms or have similar functions for the respective categories. ...
... Likewise, fonts appear to generate their own associations of meaning independent of the word they were used to write [10]. For instance, italicized fonts are generally perceived to be more active but less potent than regular Roman fonts [16], and Vision 2022, 6, x FOR PEER REVIEW 2 of 12 various tasks (e.g., making a binary like/dislike judgment, e.g., [7,11]; select a preferred item from a pair, or select a score on a preference rating scale, [11]). Although similar preferences for specific kinds of visual qualities, particularly curvy contour or roundness, have been observed for various categories, it remains unclear whether such visual qualities share similar processing mechanisms or have similar functions for the respective categories. ...
Subjective preferences for visual qualities of shapes and fonts have been separately reported. Such preferences are often similarly attributed to factors such as aesthetic impressions, attributed meaning from the visual properties, or processing fluency. Because shapes and fonts were rarely studied together, we investigated whether these qualities had a similar impact on preference judgment of object-word pairs. Each pair consisted of an abstract object with either preferred or disliked shape qualities and a pseudoword with either preferred or disliked font qualities. We found that only shape qualities, but not font qualities, influenced preference ratings of the object-word pairs, with higher preferences for pairs with preferred than disliked shapes. Moreover, eye movement results indicated that while participants fixated the word before the object, their prolonged fixation on the object when first attending to it might have contributed to the preference ratings. Nonetheless, other measures, including response times, total fixation numbers, and total dwell time, showed different patterns for shape and font qualities, revealing that participants attended more to objects with preferred than disliked shapes, and to words with disliked than preferred fonts. Taken together, these results suggest that shape and font qualities have differential influences on preferences and processing of objects and words.
... Since then, a great number of studies have found that objects that exhibit curvilinear contour are preferred to objects that exhibit angular contour (for reviews see 9,10 ). In addition to abstract and isolated forms and lines 11 , this preference for curvilinear contours has been observed across a wide range of objects, including everyday artefacts and natural entities, building facades, interior rooms, as well as visual art [12][13][14][15][16] . ...
... Semantic tasks were those that involved categorizations based on the semantic differential scales of the evaluative dimension used to measure the value of an object 70 , such as good/bad, positive/negative, aggressive/peaceful, etc. This effect might indicate that contour could have 16 a strong semantic association with the dimensions under consideration 12,19 . In other words, there could be a strong semantic association between curvilinear and angular forms and the opposing poles of those dimensions. ...
... The variable stimulus type was coded using four levels: object (k = 123), meaningless (k = 83), spatial design (k = 73), and symbol design (k = 30). Within the domain of empirical aesthetics, several studies have documented preference for curvature using real objects as well as meaningless stimuli (e.g., 12,19,110 ). Corradi and Munar 9 also noted an increasing number of studies examining preference for curvature from applied research fields (i.e., advertising, marketing, packaging, interior design). ...
Evidence dating back a century suggests that humans are sensitive to and exhibit a preference for visual curvature. Recently, this effect has been observed in different age groups, human cultures, and primate species, suggesting that a preference for curvature might be universal. At the same time, several studies have found preference for curvature to be modulated by contextual and individual factors, casting doubt on this hypothesis. To resolve these conflicting findings, we conducted a systematic meta-analysis of studies that have investigated preference for visual curvature. The results of a three-level random effects model revealed a Hedges’ g of .39—consistent with a medium effect size. Further analyses revealed preference for curvature to be moderated by four factors: Presentation time, stimulus type, expertise, and task. Together, our results suggest that preference for visual curvature is a reliable but not universal phenomenon, and influenced by factors other than perceptual information.
... Research indicates that different shape forms (curved, sharp) influence perceptions of aesthetics, emotion, and purchase intentions [12,13]. The stimuli used in these studies comprise lines, abstract figures, products, and interior designs [14][15][16][17]. More importantly, it has been consistently found that sharp objects and designs often lead to increased activation in arousal and fear-related brain areas, particularly in the amygdala, while curved designs elicit activations in reward-related brain areas, particularly in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) [12,13,15]. ...
... Humans tend to prefer round or curved shapes and objects over sharp, rectangular, or angular shapes and objects [12,14,16,17]. This has been consistently found across several research contexts such as car design, consumer product designs, abstract shapes, or interior architectural design [12,13,15,17,21]. ...
... Next to aesthetic evaluations, curved designs also tend to be associated with quiet or calm sounds, green color, and relieved emotion while sharp designs are more attributed to loud and dynamic sound, red color, and excited emotion [26]. For consumer products, sharp or angular design seems to elicit negative emotions associated with threat [12,16,[27][28][29][30], while curved designs lead not only to more positive aesthetic evaluations, but also to increased purchase intentions [13]. Consequently, we propose that websites with round buttons will elicit a more positive emotional experience (measured with pleasure), which further results in approach behavior (measured with use intention): H 1. Websites with round buttons will be rated higher in pleasure and use intention, if compared to websites with sharp buttons. ...
The investigation of website aesthetics has a long history and has already been addressed in NeuroIS research. The extant literature predominantly studied website complexity, symmetry, and colors. However, other design factors have not yet been examined so far. We studied two new factors (design mode: light vs. dark, button shape: rounded vs. sharp angled) along with color (blue vs. red). Specifically, we examined the impact of these three factors on several outcomes. Results from a repeated-measures MANOVA indicate: (i) design mode (light vs. dark) significantly affects users’ pleasure, arousal, trust, attitude, and use intention, (ii) color (blue vs. red) significantly influences pleasure, arousal, and use intentions, while (iii) button shape (rounded vs. sharp) does not significantly influence any of the dependent measures. Based on these results, follow up functional near-infrared spectroscopy studies are developed which aim to further complement our self-report findings.
... As a matter of fact, research has demonstrated that certain shapes and contours are very much ingrained in our psyche and even in our old mammalian brain, and specifically the amygdala, part of the limbic system. In fact, "curve-shaped letters are considered calming, whilst angular-shaped letters evoke anxiety" (Hyndman, 2016, p. 68 Psychological research has shown that round shapes are normally perceived as more appealing (see for example Neta, 2006 and2007;Bertamini, Palumbo, Gheorghes & Galatsidas, 2016), possibly in part for their connection with that part of the natural world which is not perceived as dangerous (like most flowers, fruit and leaves), and are normally associated with happiness and safety (Oyama, 2003;Palumbo, Ruta & Bertamini, 2015). Round letterings are, therefore, seen positively, and if they are thick they may also convey an idea of health, cheerfulness and abundance. ...
... Round letterings are, therefore, seen positively, and if they are thick they may also convey an idea of health, cheerfulness and abundance. Sharp, angular lines, on the other hand, tend to be liked less than round lines and tend to suggest anger, threat and danger (Oyama, 2003;Neta, 2006 and2007;Palumbo, Ruta & Bertamini, 2015). Bar and Neta's research (2007), for example, has shown that: (Bar and Neta, 2007, pp. ...
... Hippie and punk typography "contrasts with the ideas of invisibility, anonymity, and legibility imposed by modern typographic design" 11 . Among the stimuli used in Bar and Neta's research, English typographic characters (Arial font for the sharp letters and Arial rounded MT for the smooth letters) were also included (Bar & Neta, 2006). (Järlehed, 2015, p. 166), which make these letterings, particularly the hippie one, perhaps one of the first examples of postmodernist typography (see for example Londoño, 2015, p. 145). ...
This article looks at the use of letterings and typefaces in the linguistic landscape through a comparison of hippie and punk concert posters. After a general introduction, some definitions and an overview on the hippie and punk movements and the posters they produced, the article introduces the methodology employed, which consisted of both an analysis of the lettering used in hippie and punk posters and a survey carried out among a sample of students at Universiti Malaya (Kuala Lumpur). This is followed by an analysis and a discussion of the data, which have led to two main findings: not only were the antithetical ideas behind these two youth movements portrayed through the specific lettering and fonts used, but the latter feature specific traits that may be linked to our mental processes and possibly our limbic system, the most primordial part of our brain.
... To date, we can assert that research has made clear that humans prefer curved shapes to their angular counterparts: several studies (e.g., Silvia & Barona, 2009;Watson et al., 2012;Bar & Neta, 2006) have shown that curved lines and symmetrical shapes are preferred given their association with the happiness expression and the infant face, containing more curvilinear elements. The same studies have suggested that angularities and asymmetrical shapes are disliked, due to their association with the anger expression and dangerous objects such as knives. ...
... It turned out that whereas sharp-angled shapes conveyed negative meaning, rounded shapes elicited positive attitudes (Aronoff et al., 1992). Similar results were found by Bar and Neta (2006) using a forced choice 'liking' task: participants disliked neutral objects comprised of pointed features and sharp angles significantly more than curved ones (e.g., a watch with a sharp-angled contour in comparison with one with a curved contour). Similarly, Pavlova et al. (2005) found a positive correlation between negative emotions and the perceived instability of geometric shapes such as the triangle and the oval. ...
... To summarize, for more than a century psychologists have been interested in how individuals associate visual information with emotional valence (Barrett & Bar, 2009;Lundholm, 1921), showing that rounded shapes evoke positive feelings due to their link with happy/infant-like expression, compared with sharp/angular shapes, usually associated with the anger expression and threatening objects having negative valence (Bar & Neta, 2006;Carbon, 2010;Leder & Carbon, 2005;Silvia & Barona, 2009). However, to the best of our knowledge, no investigation has been carried out to date to assess the preference to associate simple geometric shapes to specific individual identities. ...
For more than a century, psychologists have been interested in how visual information can arouse emotions. Several studies have shown that rounded shapes evoke positive feelings due to their link with happy/baby-like expressions, compared with sharp angular shapes, usually associated with anger and threatening objects having negative valence. However, to date, no-one has investigated the preference to associate simple geometric shapes to personal identities, including one’s own, that of a close acquainted, or that of a stranger. Through 2 online surveys we asked participants to associate a geometric shape, chosen among a circle, a square and a triangle, to each of three identities, namely “you” (the self), “your best friend” or “a stranger”. We hypothesized that the circle would be more associated with the self, the square with the friend and the triangle with the stranger. Moreover, we investigated whether these associations are modulated by 3 personality traits: aggressivity, social fear and empathy. As predicted, we found that participants associate more often the circle with the self, both the circle and the square with the best friend, whereas they matched angular shapes (both the triangle and the square) to the stranger. On the other hand, the possibility that personality traits can modulate such associations was not confirmed. The study of how people associate geometric figures with the self or with other identities giving them an implicit socio-affective connotation, is interesting for all the disciplines interested in the automatic affective processes activated by visual stimuli.
... As we are studying car exterior design, understanding how the shape of a car is perceived by consumers may help us explain why certain designs are better accepted than others. In fact, literature consistently shows how people prefer curved shapes, compared to angular ones (e.g.: Bar & Neta, 2006;Gómez-Puerto et al., 2016;Palumbo & Bertamini, 2016), both for objects (e.g.: a watch, a sofa), and non-objects (i.e. random figures with no meaning), with even the same tendency occurring for chocolate and water packaging (Westerman et al., 2012). ...
... The perception of acute angles may have most likely been exacerbated by the constrained size of the stimuli (i.e. computer screen). This plus the known association of acute angles to dislike and sense of threat (as already discussed in Study 1; see Bar & Neta, 2006, may explain this visual processing more guided by the characteristics of the visual elements available. ...
To innovate or improve a current product, it is essential to understand how consumers perceive and experience it. There is an extensive research on consumer experience, but in general these studies focus on subjective measures. Therefore, the goal of this thesis is to propose and test the use of different objective measures in order to gain more insight on the cognitive processes (attentional, perceptive) and the affective processes (psychophysiological) involved in the consumer experience of car exterior design.In Study 1, in order to prove the existence of an attentional capture of car exterior design, a dot probe task was used, and level of innovation and car shape manipulated. Results showed an attentional advantage occurred towards more familiar designs and high shapes. In Study 2 we tested for the presence of specific affective responses to different designs, as well as examined visual salience and visual exploration. In a free-viewing task, two types of categorizations were analysed: shape and a confidential classification created by Renault. Low cars and curved shapes evoked higher heart rate and preference. Low and angular cars evoked a bottom-up processing (i.e. stimulus-driven). The importance of the logo on the visual exploration of car exterior design was also confirmed. In Study 3, in order to explore the potential impact of stimuli size on consumer experience, near-real-scale images of cars were presented in a free-viewing task. No differences were observed in terms of electrodermal or cardiac indicators. Curved designs (vs. angular) evoked higher pupil dilation. High, as well as angular designs were more prone to top-down influences (i.e. goal-driven), while low shapes and curved designs were more prone to bottom-up influences. In addition to the logo, the right front headlight also evoked more attention. We also observed a global exploration behaviour for the first 15s of picture presentation, followed by local exploitation behaviour.In summary, this thesis has brought to light different affective and cognitive mechanisms involved in the visual exploration of design elements, suggesting that their visual perception is an aesthetic experience. Based on an original experimental methodology for studying consumer behaviour in the fields of design and aesthetics, the present work allows us to contemplate a new approach in the study of the consumer experience at the various stages of design conception in the automotive industry.
... This is the same argument used to explain the reason people generally rate angular shapes or objects as more threatening and negative than smooth shapes or objects. It has been suggested that angularity is a cue to dangerous stimuli such as a threatening face, or thorns and sharp teeth that, if encountered, would hinder survival 6,8,9 . Thus, humans must surely have developed a mechanism to detect such dangerous stimuli rapidly and automatically. ...
... Overall, we have shown that the features important for scene perception (i.e., cues to spatial relationships 15,27 ) influence valence and threat judgements in photographs and line drawings. Our work is consistent with work done on isolated objects and geometric shapes 6,7 , and extends the findings to more complex stimulus sets -objects within scenes, landscapes, and abstract drawings made up of combinations of contour features that are known to relate to different scene layouts 15 . By finding similar results in whole scenes, or scene-like images, as have been found on objects, and given that humans only ever encounter whole scenes and objects embedded within scenes (not isolated objects) in daily life, our results potentially suggest that the previous findings in the object domain are a special case of the more general importance of valence and threat cues in complex visual scenes. ...
Quickly scanning an environment to determine relative threat is an essential part of survival. Scene gist extracted rapidly from the environment may help people detect threats. Here, we probed this link between emotional judgements and features of visual scenes. We first extracted curvature, length, and orientation statistics of all images in the International Affective Picture System image set and related them to emotional valence scores. Images containing angular contours were rated as negative, and images containing long contours as positive. We then composed new abstract line drawings with specific combinations of length, angularity, and orientation values and asked participants to rate them as positive or negative, and as safe or threatening. Smooth, long, horizontal contour scenes were rated as positive/safe, while short angular contour scenes were rated as negative/threatening. Our work shows that particular combinations of image features help people make judgements about potential threat in the environment.
... We had identified two groups: rounded-edged and chamfered-edged. Previous studies have found that people tend to prefer rounded edges objects compared to more angular in various contexts [49][50][51] Dimensions. The dimensions of the SAR affect the way it is perceived [34]. ...
... [H1b] The SAR's outline affects the user's perception. Previous studies have found that people prefer rounded edges to more angular objects in various contexts [49][50][51]. We assume that respondents will prefer rounded-edge robots and that a definite positive link will be found between rounded edges SARs and positive perception. ...
Human-SAR (socially assistive robot) relationships vary by context of use and interaction level. We argue that context and interaction considerations must be incorporated into the SAR’s physical design requirements to align the robotic visual qualities (VQs) with users’ expectations. We propose to consider situational-based and dynamics-based human-SAR relationship models in constructing the requirements. Previous studies contributed to the understanding of users` perceptions and preferences regarding existing commercially available SARs. Yet, very few studies regarding SARs’ appearance used designated SAR designs, and even fewer evaluated isolated visual features. In this work, we aim to systematically assess the effect of isolated VQs. To achieve this, we first deconstruct the VQs attributed to SARs. Then, a reconstruction of body structure, outline, and color scheme was done, resulting in the creation of 30 new SAR models that differ in their VQs, allowing us to isolate one character at a time. We used these new designs to evaluate users’ preferences and perceptions in two empirical studies. Our empirical findings link visual qualities with perceptions of SAR characteristics. Together with the relationship models, the outcomes are an exemplar of how to form guidelines for the industrial design processes of new SARs to match user expectations.
... We propose that basic perception is dependent on explicit stimulus properties and cognitive agent's perceptibility, whereas aesthetic perception or appreciation may or may not be dependent on explicit stimulus properties (see Carbon & Jakesch, 2013), but on cognitive agent's (perceiver's) personal characteristics as well (see Juslin, 2013). The explicit stimulus properties that have been found to modulate aesthetic preference include symmetry and regularity (e.g., Jacobsen et al., 2006;Jacobsen & Höfel, 2002Karim & Likova, 2018), surface smoothness (e.g., Karim, Prativa, & Likova, 2021a;Lindström et al., 2016), sharpness or angularity (e.g., Bar & Neta, 2006Cotter et al., 2017;Karim & Likova, 2018;Palumbo et al., 2015), novelty or originality (e.g., Berlyne, 1971;Haertel & Carbon, 2014;Hung & Chen, 2012;Juslin, 2013), complexity (Berlyne, 1971), and so forth. The cognitive agent's personal characteristics that can further shape aesthetic preference include the culture, experience, interest, aesthetic mind, emotional state or motivation, etc (Cela-Conde et al., 2011;Darda & Cross, 2021;Fingerhut & Prinz, 2020;Jacobsen, 2010;Masuda et al., 2008;Menninghaus et al., 2019;Menninghaus et al., 2020;Zysset et al., 2002). ...
... Yet perhaps they never have had, for example, a prior experience of tactile octagons. Now, if we present them some tactile octagons with sharp edges and some with smooth edges in a mixed manner, perhaps they will prefer, like the sighted (Bar & Neta, 2006Guthrie & Wiener, 1966;Silvia & Barona, 2009), the octagons with smooth edges over those with sharp edges, although they are likely unable to recognize the objects fully. This example lends further support to the "aesthetics-only" channel, which states that aesthetic appreciation can even operate without object recognition. ...
This integrative review rearticulates the notion of human aesthetics by critically appraising the conventional definitions, offerring a new, more comprehensive definition, and identifying the fundamental components associated with it. It intends to advance holistic understanding of the notion by differentiating aesthetic perception from basic perceptual recognition, and by characterizing these concepts from the perspective of information processing in both visual and nonvisual modalities. To this end, we analyze the dissociative nature of information processing in the brain, introducing a novel local-global integrative model that differentiates aesthetic processing from basic perceptual processing. This model builds on the current state of the art in visual aesthetics as well as newer propositions about nonvisual aesthetics. This model comprises two analytic channels: aesthetics-only channel and perception-to-aesthetics channel. The aesthetics-only channel primarily involves restricted local processing for quality or richness (e.g., attractiveness, beauty/prettiness, elegance, sublimeness, catchiness, hedonic value) analysis, whereas the perception-to-aesthetics channel involves global/extended local processing for basic feature analysis, followed by restricted local processing for quality or richness analysis. We contend that aesthetic processing operates independently of basic perceptual processing, but not independently of cognitive processing. We further conjecture that there might be a common faculty, labeled as aesthetic cognition faculty, in the human brain for all sensory aesthetics albeit other parts of the brain can also be activated because of basic sensory processing prior to aesthetic processing, particularly during the operation of the second channel. This generalized model can account not only for simple and pure aesthetic experiences but for partial and complex aesthetic experiences as well.
... People prefer curved or rounded objects, and this preference for curvature may come from a natural physiological response [43]. Bar and Neta [4] presented a wide range of stimuli, that was randomly generated watches, couches, and patterns, and then the participants rated their level of preference. As expected, people preferred rounded objects to angular objects. ...
... The previous study found humans preferred curved visual objects. Whether the outline of visual objects was sharp angled or curved, the type of outline had a critical influence on people's attitude toward that object [4]. Therefore, in this study, the rectangular interface was taken as the research object, the semantic vocabularies that could reflect people's emotional needs for human-machine interface were collected, the people's emotional preferences for rectangular outlines with different radius of curvature and aesthetic proportions were discussed. ...
Previous studies had found that people preferred curved visual objects. This study aimed to explore the relationship between curvature and proportion of human-machine interface and emotional preference based on Kansei Engineering. First, through the survey, the five groups of target emotional images of human-machine interface were deduced: Safe - Dangerous, Rigorous - Lively, Masculine - Feminine, Cold - Warm, and Soft - Hard. Secondly, different curvature and proportion levels were used as stimuli to explore their influence on emotional preference. Participants in the experiment interacted with the prototype of human-machine interface samples, and provide Likert scale scores about emotional preference for each sample. Then, based on analysis of variance and factor analysis, the subjects’ perception to the evaluated interface was revealed. In Study 1, one-way analysis of variance studied the influence of curvature levels of human-machine interface on emotional preference. The results showed that curvature was positively correlated with the emotions of safe, lively, feminine, warm, and soft, while curvature was negatively correlated with the emotions of dangerous, rigorous, masculine, cold, and hard. In Study 2, one-way analysis of variance studied the influence of the proportion of length to width of human-machine interface on emotional preference. The results showed that the proportion affected Safe - Dangerous, Rigorous - Lively, Masculine - Feminine, and Cold - Warm, but not Soft - Hard. In Study 3, a two-way analysis of variance was conducted with Serious - Relaxed as target emotions, and the curvature and proportion were changed at the same time. The results showed no interaction between curvature and proportion, and people’s perception of curvature change was stronger than proportion. Therefore, designers should pay more attention to curvature design than the proportion of length to width of human-machine interface, and use curvature design to meet the consumers’ emotional needs, to increase aesthetic pleasure.
... S61 and S89, as two of the three wrist wearables that received the best visual evaluation, inherited the round shape of traditional watch dials in appearance [49]. This finding supports the research demonstrated by Bar and Neta that, when people are confronted with round and angular items, they always prefer the objects with rounded contours [78]. The rounded appearance of the screen of the wrist wearables can be used as an aesthetic implication to inspire consumers' aesthetic sensibilities [21]. ...
... The fuzzy theory is then used to quantify the data from participants' evaluations of representative samples into objective, helpful information [60,61]. This paper also compared the results with previous studies [21,24,49,[78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85]. In this study, wrist wearables with a shape close to a traditional watch dial (round), with a bezel and mechanical buttons (moderate complexity) and asymmetric forms may receive a higher evaluation, preference and willingness to purchase. ...
This study aimed to investigate consumers’ visual image evaluation of wrist wearables based on Kansei engineering. A total of 8 representative samples were screened from 99 samples using the multidimensional scaling (MDS) method. Five groups of adjectives were identified to allow participants to express their visual impressions of wrist wearable devices through a questionnaire survey and factor analysis. The evaluation of eight samples using the five groups of adjectives was analyzed utilizing the triangle fuzzy theory. The results showed a relatively different evaluation of the eight samples in the groups of “fashionable and individual” and “rational and decent”, but little distinction in the groups of “practical and durable”, “modern and smart” and “convenient and multiple”. Furthermore, wrist wearables with a shape close to a traditional watch dial (round), with a bezel and mechanical buttons (moderate complexity) and asymmetric forms received a higher evaluation. The acceptance of square- and elliptical-shaped wrist wearables was relatively low. Among the square- and rectangular-shaped wrist wearables, the greater the curvature of the chamfer, the higher the acceptance. Apparent contrast between the color of the screen and the casing had good acceptance. The influence of display size on consumer evaluations was relatively small. Similar results were obtained in the evaluation of preferences and willingness to purchase. The results of this study objectively and effectively reflect consumers’ evaluation and potential demand for the visual images of wrist wearables and provide a reference for designers and industry professionals.
... This hypothesis was statistically confirmed. Spines have sharp-angled features, and such features enhance a feeling of threat because sharp objects such as teeth, claws or horns have been harmful to humans throughout our evolutionary history [46]. Not surprisingly, peace-fulness is associated with round shapes, whereas angular shapes are associated with anger and aggression [47]. ...
... Our second hypothesis suggested that (2) the presence of flowers positively influences perceived attractiveness and WTP plants but decreases the perceived danger of plants. In line with previous reasoning, natural preferences for curved shapes positively influenced the perceived attractiveness of plants [46]. The aesthetic value of flowers [40,42,43] substantially contributed to the decreased perceived danger of plants. ...
Degradation of biodiversity is one of the current problems of today, and scientists are increasingly concerned with identifying the key factors influencing people's willingness to protect (WTP) wild organisms. Using a within-subject design, we investigated the influence of aposematic signals along with the presence or absence of flowers on perceived danger, attractiveness and WTP plants with lower secondary school students (mean age = 13 yrs) in Slovakia (n = 423). Aposematic plants received a higher dangerousness score (mean = 2.62 vs. 2.27), higher attractiveness score (mean = 3.45 vs. 3.32) and lower WTP plants than plants without aposematic signals (mean = 3.27 vs. 3.37). Interaction terms showed that males perceived the aposematic species as more dangerous than females and were more willing to protect species lacking aposematic signals. Females rated aposematic plants as more attractive than non-aposematic plants (mean = 3.82 vs. 3.0). The presence of flowers increased the perceived attractiveness of plants (mean = 3.75 vs. 3.02) and WTP plants (mean = 3.59 vs. 3.05) and decreased perceived dangerousness (mean = 2.70 vs. 2.20). Perceived attractiveness and WTP plants decreased with students' age. Students with a higher interest in plants rated the attractiveness of the species more positively and were also more willing to protect them regardless of the presence of aposematic signals. We conclude that the presence of aposematic signals does not directly contribute to WTP plants, but conspicuous traits with high aesthetic value, such as flowers, positively enhance WTP in Slovak students.
... Neuroaesthetics research has focussed on deconstructing features of visual art, such as form, colour, symmetry, complexity, luminance and contrast (Bar & Neta, 2006;Bona et al., 2015;Graham et al., 2016;Hayn-Leichsenring et al., 2020;Iigaya et al., 2021;Jacobsen et al., 2006;Jacobsen & Höfel, 2003;Nadal et al., 2010;Palmer & Schloss, 2010;Van Geert & Wagemans, 2019;Vartanian et al., 2013). Although many different visual features of art have been studied from a neuroscientific perspective, it is maybe surprising that implied motion has only received limited attention (Di Dio et al., 2016;Kim & Blake, 2007;Thakral et al., 2012). ...
Although there is growing interest in the neural foundations of aesthetic experience, it remains unclear how particular mental sub‐systems (e.g., perceptual, affective, cognitive) are involved in different types of aesthetic judgments. Here we use fMRI to investigate the involvement of different neural networks during aesthetic judgments of visual artworks with implied motion cues. First, a behavioural experiment (N=45) confirmed a preference for paintings with implied motion over static cues. Subsequently, in a pre‐registered fMRI experiment (N=27), participants made aesthetic and motion judgments towards paintings representing human bodies in dynamic and static postures. Using functional region‐of‐interest and Bayesian multilevel modelling approaches, we provide no compelling evidence for unique sensitivity within or between neural systems associated with body perception, motion and affective processing during the aesthetic evaluation of paintings with implied motion. However, we show suggestive evidence that motion and body‐selective systems may integrate signals via functional connections with a separate neural network in dorsal parietal cortex, which may act as a relay or integration site. Our findings clarify the roles of basic visual and affective brain circuitry in evaluating a central aesthetic feature – implied motion – whilst also pointing towards promising future research directions, which involve modelling aesthetic preferences as hierarchical interplay between visual and affective circuits and integration processes in frontoparietal cortex.
... Typeface is a prominent example of how a certain shape can communicate taste, and one that has shown consistent reports of crossmodally congruent effects (e.g., Velasco, Hyndman, & Spence, 2018a;Velasco & Spence, 2019). Here, exposure to round (angular) typefaces leads to sweeter (more sour/bitter) taste-related outcomes, which appears to be driven by the positive and negative emotions experienced when exposed to the shape of the typeface (Bar & Neta, 2006;Velasco, Woods, Deroy, & Spence, 2015, Velasco, Woods, Hyndman, & Spence, 2015. ...
Several studies suggest that consumers match stimuli across sensory modalities, with angular (vs. round) typefaces typically associated with sourness (vs. sweetness). Drawing on findings from the field of crossmodal correspondences, this study (N = 220) examined potential typeface effects in naturalistic settings and found that exposure to angular (vs. round) typeface increased (decreased) consumers' preferences for sour (sweet) food but had no impact on their expectations or perceptions of these tastes. Moreover, while typeface did not have a direct effect on food choices, consumers exposed to angular (vs. round) typeface reported a greater relative preference for sour over sweet foods, resulting in sourer (vs. sweeter) food choices. However, the effects of typeface on preferences and food choices were moderated by consumers' age, and only applied to older (vs. younger) consumers, with different taste preferences among older and younger consumers constituting a possible explanation for such age-contingent findings. Thus, exposure to angular (vs. round) typeface increased older consumers' choice likelihood of sourer (vs. sweeter) food alternatives, with this effect being mediated by increased preferences for sour relative to sweet foods. Taken together, the current research reveals how, why, and when typefaces may be crossmodally linked to consumers' preferences, purchase patterns, and choice behavior.
... The word kiki, by virtue of combining phonologically voiced and voiceless sounds, can be seen as involving conflicting cues for spikiness [60], at least with respect to the phonetic dimension of voicing, ergo yielding a weaker effect, as our results show. An additional possibility is that our results reflect a general visual preference for curved contours, which has been shown in humans [105] as well as great apes [106]. This could have the effect of amplifying congruent responses in bouba trials and decreasing congruent responses in kiki trials, independently of perceptual correspondence between word and shape. ...
The bouba/kiki effect—the association of the nonce word bouba with a round shape and kiki with a spiky shape—is a type of correspondence between speech sounds and visual properties with potentially deep implications for the evolution of spoken language. However, there is debate over the robustness of the effect across cultures and the influence of orthography. We report an online experiment that tested the bouba/kiki effect across speakers of 25 languages representing nine language families and 10 writing systems. Overall, we found strong evidence for the effect across languages, with bouba eliciting more congruent responses than kiki . Participants who spoke languages with Roman scripts were only marginally more likely to show the effect, and analysis of the orthographic shape of the words in different scripts showed that the effect was no stronger for scripts that use rounder forms for bouba and spikier forms for kiki . These results confirm that the bouba/kiki phenomenon is rooted in crossmodal correspondence between aspects of the voice and visual shape, largely independent of orthography. They provide the strongest demonstration to date that the bouba/kiki effect is robust across cultures and writing systems.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part II)’.
... The seventy-five years of history following his research of the computational measurement of geometric properties were reported by Greenfield (2005). Since then, Bar and Neta (2006) showed that curvilinear contour activated the brain region strongly responsive to objects' reward properties and emotional salience. Redies (2007)presented the general aspect of visual information processing implemented by our visual brain. ...
Defining architectural shapes and then clarifying their geometric differences has always been a demanding task despite some progress in developing contour-based shape descriptors in recent years. In contrast with the shape descriptors mainly focusing either on retrieval performance or measures of visible space volume, there appears to be relatively few research works on the description of definite geometric properties in architectural shapes. This research proposes methods for quantitatively describing an architectural shape as the degree to which they represent the three primary shapes of circle, triangle and square. History has ensured that the shapes are regarded as primary ones, but any shape can also be viewed as one of them. A series of automated models that gradually deform the basic shapes into other forms are developed to identify and verify the best methods for describing the architectural forms. The three architectural shape descriptors, referred to as ‘circularity’, ‘triangularity’ and ‘squareness’, produce the second index of ‘shape deformity’, measuring the degree of how a shape is deformed from the primary shapes. This measurement makes it possible to investigate the degree to how a particular type of primary shape is dominant among those three primary shape descriptions. These shape description techniques are tested in sixty shapes consisting of the facades and floor plans of thirty well-known buildings.
... Angular stimuli were found to be associated with threat (Aronoff et al., 1988;Aronoff et al., 1992) and aggressive emotions (Hevner, 1935;Lundholm, 1921;Poffenberger & Barrows, 1924). Furthermore, Bar and Neta suggested that curvature preference could be due to threat avoidance (Bar & Neta, 2006). Palumbo et al. found that angular polygons were associated with negative emotions, whereas curved polygons were associated with positive emotions (Palumbo et al., 2015). ...
Previous research has shown that face masks restrain the ability to perceive social information and readability of emotions. These studies mostly explored the effect of standard medical, often white masks on emotion recognition. However, in reality, many individuals prefer masks with different styles. We investigated whether the appearance of the mask (pattern-angular vs. curvy and color-black vs. white) affected the recognition of emotional states. Participants were asked to identify the emotions on faces covered by masks with different designs. The presence of masks impeded emotional recognition, dropping the accuracy and confidence and increasing reaction times. There were no main effects of angularity vs. curvature or color on emotion recognition, which suggests that mask design may not impair the recognition beyond the effect of mere mask wearing. Besides, we found relationships between individual difference variables such as mask wearing attitudes, mask design preferences, individual traits and emotional recognition. The majority of participants demonstrated positive attitudes towards mask wearing and preferred non-patterned black and white masks. Preferences for white masks were associated with better emotional recognition of masked faces. In contrast, those with negative attitudes towards masks showed lower performance in emotional recognition for masked faces, preferring patterned more than plain masks, perhaps viewing masks as a fashion item rather than a necessity. Moreover, preferences to wear patterned masks were negatively related to actual wearing masks indoors and perceived risks of COVID.
... For example, if we are looking at an unknown object, our knowledge cannot guide us to interact with it in a proper distance, but our visual systems may use heuristics based on visual features to induce aesthetic experience, which in turns motivate us to seek a proper viewing distance. This way, the function of visual size preference is to assist active learning by motivating us to modulate the visual inputs themselves, adding support to the idea that aesthetic experience interacts with perception (e.g., Chen & Scholl, 2014) and serves adaptive functions (e.g., Bar & Neta, 2006;Chen, Colombatto, & Scholl, 2018;Forman, Chen, Scholl, & Alvarez, submitted;Orians & Heerwagen, 1992). Avenues that examine the relevance and functional role of these systematic visual size preferences are open for future study. ...
When viewing objects depicted in a frame, observers prefer to view large objects like cars in larger sizes and smaller objects like cups in smaller sizes. That is, the visual size of an object that "looks best" is linked to its typical physical size in the world. Why is this the case? One intuitive possibility is that these preferences are driven by semantic knowledge: For example, when we recognize a sofa, we access our knowledge about its real-world size, and this influences what size we prefer to view the sofa within a frame. However, might visual processing play a role in this phenomenon--that is, do visual features that are related to big and small objects look better at big and small visual sizes, respectively, even when observers do not have explicit access to semantic knowledge about the objects? To test this possibility, we used "texform" images, which are synthesized versions of recognizable objects, which critically retain local perceptual texture and coarse form information, but are no longer explicitly recognizable. To test for visual size preferences, we used a two-interval forced choice task, in which each texform was presented at the preferred visual size of its corresponding original image, and a visual size slightly bigger or smaller. Observers consistently selected the texform presented at the canonical visual size as the more aesthetically pleasing one. These results suggest that the preferred visual size of an object depends not only on explicit knowledge of its real-world size, but also can be evoked by mid-level visual features that systematically covary with an object's real-world size.
... Moreover, affective responses can also be influenced by abstract and geometrical shapes, since curved shapes are less arousing than edgy shapes (Pacheco et al., 2015). Bar and Neta (2006) reported in their experiment that pictures of neutral objects with sharp edges were significantly less liked than the same objects with curved contour (e.g., guitar with a curved contour vs. a guitar with sharp edges). Likewise, angular geometric shapes were associated with unpleasant valence (Larson et al., 2012). ...
Graphs have become an increasingly important means of representing data, for instance, when communicating data on climate change. However, graph characteristics might significantly affect graph comprehension. The goal of the present work was to test whether the marking forms usually depicted on line-graphs, can have an impact on graph evaluation. As past work suggests that triangular forms might be related to threat, we compared the effect of triangular marking forms with other symbols (triangles, circles, squares, rhombi, and asterisks) on subjective assessments. Participants in Study 1 (N = 314) received 5 different line-graphs about climate change, each of them using one out of 5 marking forms. In Study 1, the threat and arousal ratings of the graphs with triangular marking shapes were not higher than those with the other marking symbols. Participants in Study 2 (N = 279) received the same graphs, yet without labels and indeed rated the graphs with triangle point markers as more threatening. Testing whether local rather than global spatial attention would lead to an impact of marker shape in climate graphs, Study 3 (N = 307) documented that a task demanding to process a specific data-point on the graph (rather than just the line graph as a whole) did not lead to an effect either. These results suggest that marking symbols can principally affect threat and arousal ratings but not in the context of climate change. Hence, in graphs on climate change, choice of point markers does not have to take potential side-effects on threat and arousal into account. These seem to be restricted to the processing of graphs where form aspects face less competition from the content domain on judgments.
... In natural environments, non-straight/curvy lines and edges are considered more chaotic and disorderly Bertamini et al. 2016), however, curvy lines are associated with being friendly, or welcoming, and often are preferred by humans (Bar and Neta 2006;Silvia and Barona 2009;Bertamini et al. 2016). The general feeling around curvy lines and friendliness has been established in not only the artistic community (Bertamini et al. 2016), starting with Youtube user Triple-Q drawing Nintendo's Kirby and titling the video Kirby is Shaped Like a Friend (TripleQ 2014). ...
Recent research has quantified aspects of the built environment to understand which visual features may play a role in environmental preferences and behavior. The occurrence of different low-level (e.g., spatial and color properties) and mid-level features (e.g., objects) that mimic patterns seen in nature may influence the quality of pedestrian experiences in urban environments. For example, buildings harboring low-level visual features/patterns that mimic that of nature were perceived to be more naturalistic and significantly predicted preference ratings for architectural scenes. In addition, mid-level visual features with natural elements (e.g., green plants, trees) existing in urban environments increased positive pedestrian experiences, such as feelings of safety, liveliness and beauty. By quantifying visual characteristics and design qualities, one can relate more abstract aspects of an urban space to quantifiable design features, which provides the opportunity to establish a causal relationship between design features and psychological feelings such as walkability, preference, visual complexity and disorder. This research combining perception, computer vision and urban design could help to create more preferable and walkable urban centers.
... Contour is also a very important feature of architectural space. A series of studies have shown that most people believe that curvilinear contours are more beautiful than rectilinear contours (Leder and Carbon, 2005;Bar and Neta, 2006;Dazkir and Read, 2011;Vartanian et al., 2013). Ceiling height and openness also affect people's cognition and emotion in an architectural space (Franz et al., 2005;Meyers-Levy et al., 2007): Under a high ceiling, people tend to have more positive emotions, such as "happy, " "comfortable" and "fun." ...
Understanding the factors influencing the aesthetic experience of architectures is an important topic in empirical aesthetics. In this study, we examined the effect of three architectural factors, i.e., ceiling height, openness, and contour, on viewers' aesthetic appreciation through a series of experiments. In previous studies on architectural aesthetics, participants were usually asked to view an image of an architectural space for a few seconds. The long viewing time allows them to focus on different parts of the architecture and then make an aesthetic judgment. The long viewing time, however, also makes it difficult to obtain viewers' aesthetic scores for a large number of architectural spaces in a short period. In this study, we shortened the visual presentation time to 200 ms, which allowed the viewers to have only one fixation on the image, and asked the viewers to make an aesthetic judgment. It was found that the experiment with a 200-ms viewing time could establish how the three architectural factors influenced aesthetic judgment as well as previous experiments with a 3,000-ms viewing time, suggesting that aesthetic judgment could be made within one fixation. Additionally, we investigated the impact of color on architectural aesthetic judgment by presenting grayscale images. We found that the three architectural factors influenced aesthetic judgment in similar ways for both color and grayscale images. In summary, we found that color was not a main factor modulating viewers' architectural aesthetic judgments, and we also presented a way to quickly obtain aesthetic scores for architectural spaces.
... In the subjective evaluation, S-icons had the lowest score, while RS-icons had the highest score. is was related to people's preference for curves. Research has shown that [40] people prefer curved objects, and this preference comes from natural physiological responses. Angles symbolize threats, and sharp and jagged objects are usually dangerous. ...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the icon border form and interface background color saturation’s individual and connected impacts on interface interaction. They were two important factors affecting user visual experience and search performance, but previously they have been studied individually. An experiment using eye-tracking, behavior measurement, and subjective evaluation was carried out to determine the influence of app icon border form and interface background color saturation on user visual experience and search performance. The statistical results showed that during the human-computer interaction process, compared with the circle and rounded square border forms, the square icons had the longest search completion time and first fixation time and the lowest subjective evaluation score. In addition, rounded square icons had the best user visual experience. Compared with high-saturation background color, less time was required to complete search tasks in the low-saturation background color condition. Higher perceptual usability and aesthetic scores were also obtained under this condition compared to the high-saturation background color condition. Hence, this study confirmed that the two factors of icon border form and interface background color saturation had the basic properties of the interaction effect. The combination of rounded square icons and low-saturation background color can be beneficial to improve user search performance and visual experience. The findings can help in the design of human-computer interaction interfaces.
... As pointed out above, both human children and the chimpanzee Congo seem to appreciate geometrical shapes. Curvature is apparently better than straight and angular lines (Bar & Neta, 2006), perhaps because curves offer more in terms of complexity. ...
We suggest an evolutionary based explanation for why humans are preoccupied with aesthetic aspects of visual input. Briefly, humans evolved to be swayed by positive and negative feelings in the form of rewards and punishments, and to pursue situations that induce rewards, even when the feeling is not sufficiently strong to be recognized as a reward. The brain is designed to offer rewards when a person focuses on certain types of visual stimuli. For example, warm colors are typically pleasant because they are associated with edible fruits, and complex images appeal to curiosity. At some point people began exploiting these types of brain rewards by beautifying objects and creating art. The utility of objects, and the associative (or communicative) aspects of art, may dominate the design, but the artist tends to add aesthetic elements. These elements imply visual aspects that do not add to the functional value or evoke memories or associations based on easily recognized features in the picture. The adaptive rationale for the rewards offered by the aesthetic elements should help explain human aesthetic appreciation.
... As a result, our experiments do not attempt to address the heights of aesthetic beauty, 21-23 but they instead capture the type of aesthetic impressions that permeate our everyday lives. Such ''ordinary'' stimuli have been explored in empirical aesthetics more generally, 22,24 but not in studies of aesthetic taste-perhaps because of strong associations between taste and sophistication. One may be accused of having ''bad taste in art,'' but not ''bad taste in clouds''! ...
Aesthetic experience seems both regular and idiosyncratic. On one hand, there are powerful regularities in what we tend to find attractive versus unattractive (e.g., beaches versus mud puddles).1, 2, 3, 4 On the other hand, our tastes also vary dramatically from person to person:5, 6, 7, 8 what one of us finds beautiful, another might find distasteful. What is the nature of such differences? They may in part be arbitrary—e.g., reflecting specific past judgments (such as liking red towels over blue ones because they were once cheaper). However, they may also in part be systematic—reflecting deeper differences in perception and/or cognition. We assessed the systematicity of aesthetic taste by exploring its typicality for the first time across seeing and hearing. Observers rated the aesthetic appeal of ordinary scenes and objects (e.g., beaches, buildings, and books) and environmental sounds (e.g., doorbells, dripping, and dialtones). We then measured “taste typicality” (separately for each modality) in terms of the similarity between each individual’s aesthetic preferences and the population’s average. The data revealed two primary patterns. First, taste typicality was not arbitrary but rather was correlated to a moderate degree across seeing and hearing: people who have typical taste for images also tend to have typical taste for sounds. Second, taste typicality captured most of the explainable variance in people’s impressions, showing that it is the primary dimension along which aesthetic tastes systematically vary.
... In this study, we manipulated the symmetry within the webpage by adopting a vertical symmetry, so the webpage that incorporated a block alignment option Grid shape. Several studies provide evidence for the effect of object shapes on people's preferences, with Bar and Neta (2006) providing an explanation of that phenomenon, as sharp-contoured objects could be perceived as potential causes of physical harm as compared to rounded objects. Westerman et al. (2012) find that consumers tend to prefer products with rounded forms to those with angular forms when product images with different shapes are displayed to them. ...
... Given Hogarth's innovative ideas and his enduring great influence in various fields of aesthetics, art, and design, it is surprising that his line of beauty is largely ignored in research on empirical aesthetics. This is the more astonishing as the curvature effect has intensively been investigated, i.e., the hypothesis that curved shapes are preferred over angular ones (e.g., Bar & Neta, 2006;Bertamini et al., 2016;Carbon, 2010;Corradi et al., 2019;Gómez-Puerto et al., 2017;. Admittedly, compared to the curvature effect, the line of beauty is more specific. ...
Since the Renaissance, different line types have been distinguished by artists and art theorists. However, it took another hundreds of years until the British artist William Hogarth attributed different degrees of beauty to them. Particularly, in his book “The Analysis of Beauty” (1753) he depicted seven waving lines, declared line number 4 as the most beautiful, and called it the “line of beauty”. Until today, the line of beauty has a persistently strong influence in many areas such as landscape art and design, calligraphy, furniture design, architecture, dance, etc. It is astonishing that Hogarth's assumptions have never been empirically tested. Therefore, we asked participants to rate Hogarth's lines by their beauty. As a result, line number 4 was indeed the most preferred, although number 5 was judged similarly. An analysis revealed that curvature was nonlinearly related to beauty and explains more than 90% of the variance in the mean aesthetic judgments.
... Figure 5 maps the methodological model for micro level computation efforts. As shown, the process is much less linear and involves looped exchanges of bespoke data that has been established from empirical human factors analysis -this could be emotional responses to certain form elements (see Bar & Neta, 2006) or ergonomics and usability data derived from physical testing or data capture such as 3D scanning or motion capturing (Paoli et al, 2020 reviewed several relevant technologies). Crucially, this block of bespoke data fundamentally changes the "culture" of the operation as the critical assumption is that subjective psycho-social factors will play a role in how the end product will interact with the human world; the design outcome is not partitioned from direct human influence. ...
This paper presents models that identify two “cultures” of computational design practice. By reviewing the established culture of computational optimization efforts and contrasting it with the emerging work integrating human-factors into these optimizations, this paper argues that there are sets of key assumptions, outputs and tools that can be synthesized for a generalizable understanding of computational design. Furthermore, this synthesis facilitates the identification of key tools suited to computational design efforts seeking to integrate the complex data associated with human-factors.
... Studies in a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 the Western culture have shown that the aesthetic judgment of architecture is influenced by the response to specific sensory features, such as contour, ceiling height, and openness [1,9]. Studies have showed that Western observers prefer structures with curvilinear contours, high ceilings, and open space [10][11][12][13]. Ceiling height and openness also impact people's perception and emotion [8,14]. ...
Architects should consider the aesthetic experience of potential users when designing architectures. Previous studies have shown that subjective aesthetic judgment of architectures is influenced by structure features, and Western observers prefer structures that have curvilinear contours, high ceilings, and open space. The building styles, however, vary across cultures, and it remains unclear whether the preference for contours, ceiling height, and openness exist across cultures. To investigate this issue, this study analyzes the aesthetic judgment of Chinese observers, and the results demonstrate that Chinese observers also prefer high ceilings and open space. Preference for curvilinear contours, however, interacts with ceiling height and openness. Simple effect analysis reveals that Chinese observers prefer curvilinear contours only when the ceiling is low and the space is closed. In sum, these results suggest that preference for high ceilings and open space is robust for Chinese observers, but the preference for curvilinear contours is less reliable.
... Shape symbolism refers to the association of a particular shape with certain properties [34]. For example, circular objects-which inspire friendliness and harmony-may be preferred rather than angular shapes [35]. Many studies have suggested a relationship between circular shapes and the hedonic effect [36], as curved shapes evoke higher hedonic scores [37]. ...
Whether for improving health or keeping in shape, consumers are beginning to pay attention to calorie intake. However, although a growing number of studies have focused on the impact of food attributes on consumers, the sensory correspondence between food shape and calorie estimation is an underresearched topic. This review, therefore, reports on three studies investigating the effect of food shape on calorie content estimation, whereby participants perceived food in a square shape to have a higher calorie content than food in a circular shape. Perceived food weight plays a mediating role in the relationship between food shape and calorie estimation. Moreover, the more mindful participants were about calorie intake, the weaker the mediation effect of perceived weight. Conversely, the mediation effect of perceived weight was stronger for people who did not care about their calorie intake. These findings break novel ground by presenting food shape as a relevant factor for calorie content estimation. It not only pays attention to the information brought by the visual sense of food, but also complements the relevant literature in the field of food marketing, and has implications for marketing management.
... From the point of view of the track, the lines are straight, curved, etc. Justified or not, more attention was paid to curved lines. Given that in nature straight lines are rare, and curved ones are much more common, the hypothesis was launched (later verified by scientific experiments) that humans prefer curved objects [2,3,4]. But curved lines are not the subject of this paper. ...
The straight line is an important element of visual language. This type of line is generally less studied, and the dedicated literature contains mainly theoretical assertions. The present paper presents the results of a complex experiment that had as general objective the investigation of straight line in terms of significance and aesthetic value. Following the application of different statistical methods, the following conclusions were reached: a) a general significance cannot be associated with every straight line, and in the few cases when an associated significance was outlined, the correlation was of medium intensity; b) people prefer associations with concrete elements to the detriment of abstract elements; c) the characteristics of the line that condition the aesthetic evaluation are: the length, the inclination, the position within the observed space and the number of space edges reached; d) the straight line with a high aesthetic content is long, centrally placed, touches two edges and is not inclined (with one notable exception); e) the associated significance (word or phrase) is the one that imposes the positive or negative appreciation of the straight line. Rezumat Linia dreaptă este un element important al limbajului vizual. Acest tip de linie este în general puţin studiat, iar literatura de specialitate conţine mai ales aserţiuni teoretice. Lucrarea de faţă cuprinde rezultatele unui experiment complex care a avut ca obiectiv general investigarea liniei drepte din punct de vedere al semnificaţiei şi al valorii estetice. În urma aplicării a diferite metode statistice, s-a ajuns la următoarele concluzii: a) nu se poate asocia o semnificaţie general valabilă fiecărei linii drepte, iar în puţinele cazuri când s-a conturat o semnificaţie asociată, corelaţia a fost de intensitate medie; b) oamenii preferă asocieri cu elemente concrete în defavoarea elementelor abstracte; c) caracteristicile liniei care condiţionează evaluarea estetică sunt: lungimea, înclinarea, poziţia în cadrul spaţiului observat şi numărul de margini ale spaţiului atinse; d) linia dreaptă cu un conţinut estetic ridicat este lungă, plasată central, atinge două margini şi nu este înclinată (cu o excepţie notabilă); e) semnificaţia asociată (cuvânt sau expresie) este cea care impune aprecierea pozitivă sau negativă a liniei drepte.
... Existing research indicates that individuals visually prefer symmetrical stimuli over asymmetrical stimuli (Little et al., 2007;Shepherd & Bar, 2011), perceptually balanced stimuli over unbalanced stimuli (Hübner & Fillinger, 2016;Wilson & Chatterjee, 2005), harmonious stimuli over inharmonious stimuli (Locher et al., 1999;Nickel et al., 2020), curved contoured stimuli over sharp-angled stimuli (Bar & Neta, 2006;Blijlevens, Mugge, et al., 2009;Leder et al., 2011;Palumbo et al., 2015;Reber et al., 2004;Silvia & Barona, 2009), and familiar stimuli over unfamiliar stimuli (Trapp et al., 2015). These visual preferences are attributes that inform an individual's overall mental model of a product. ...
Understanding product semantics and affective perceptions of product consumers undoubtedly offer significant value for industrial designers and their design practice. Deconstructing affective perceptions is a methodologically challenging task as it is implicit and subjective and is influenced by an individual’s aesthetic experience. Accordingly, how products are perceived differs among individuals or consumers, particularly in the distinct experiences that contribute to constructing an individual’s sense of perception of self or self-concept. Furthermore, research has shown that individuals are implicitly drawn to products that reaffirm and communicate their self-concept. If an individual’s preferences for products can reflect or enhance their self-concept, this suggests that understanding the underlying perceptual processes between the self-concept and product semantics can productively inform industrial design research.
The thesis research develops and adapts methods from the disciplines of psychology, marketing, and industrial design to investigate these underlying perceptual processes of the self-concept and its relationships to product semantics. The thesis research investigates the underlying processes through a study on kettles that discloses the variances in sensory and cognitive evaluation and judgements through the process of aesthetic experience. The thesis further investigates the cognitive influences of the self-concept to reveal the mental models associated with the visual aesthetics of product form and how this influences aesthetic responses through product personality congruence. The thesis argues that the self-concept is a multidimensional construct reflected, in particular, through an individual’s (1) gender identity, (2) personality, (3) aesthetic sensitivity, and (4) interest, taste, and goals, that plays a vital role in the aesthetic experience of products. The thesis’s findings indicate that these individual components of the self-concept are essential in that they interplay in how the symbolic meaning of product semantics is visually perceived. The outcome of this thesis assists in, primarily, revealing the underlying stages of visual aesthetic processing to understand how product semantics is perceived through an individual’s self-concept.
Bridges are a paradigmatic case of human transformation of nature, and their design should always aspire to improve the quality of the built world. Even in the early stages of their history, bridges transcended their mere functional role to become objects with aesthetic ambitions. Nowadays, however, the disappearance of technical calculation limitations has made possible, in the opinion of the author, to deliver the information needed to build a bridge with almost no emotional engagement in the process. Also, education at universities rarely aims for a well-rounded set of skills that allows to simultaneously master the technical challenges of bridge design, while understanding how the users and perceivers will experience them. The objective of this article is to contribute to fill this gap by trying to understand how human beings perceive and feel the world around them, what makes parts of this world attractive for them, and how this can be consciously used as a key part of the bridge design process to conceive long-lasting valuable pieces of the built environment.
This research aims to understand the factors that contribute to the quality of life within isolated, confined, extreme (ICE) environments by investigating the architectural elements that affect an individual’s spatial perception, their manifestation in ICE environments, and how spatial confinement and isolation contribute to changes in an individual’s perception of spaciousness. The researchers performed an in-depth examination on three different habitats, designed to simulate life in ICE environments, to identify which architectural elements were important contributors to positive and negative changes in spaciousness. For further explorations, fourteen design professionals were asked to evaluate these habitats using the Spaciousness and Crampedness Scale (SCS) and measuring the relative estimation in error of habitats’ areas. Afterward, the evaluations were compared with the examinations. The results indicate that the environment’s geometry, lighting, color, and texture significantly contribute to perceived spaciousness when evaluated through qualitative and quantitative methods.
Emotional reactions are important in people’s lives and can be positively or negatively affected by the architectural environment in which they find themselves. This study aims to understand how architectural forms, whether curved or straight, can influence emotional reactions, through an objective (biosensors) and subjective (questionnaires) evaluation of two apartments. Most of the studies carried out with biosensors and subjective techniques we analyzed do not present any context and isolate the stimuli from the experiences (static situations) in such a way that they become unreal in the face of the environments that people experience in their daily lives. In this study, we designed two similar apartments, with only formal architectural variations, one with curved shapes and the other with rectilinear shapes. The methodology applied is based on subjective techniques, depending on the opinion of the participants (Self-assessment Manikin), and also on objective techniques, which use physiological measurements obtained by biosensors (Electrical Dermal Activity, Electrocardiogram, Respiratory Frequency and Amplitude). A narrative was used to give the same context to all participants and give them freedom to explore the space during the visit to the apartments. The objective results showed that the curvilinear apartment provoked less activation than the rectilinear apartment, which may mean that the participants were more relaxed or calm in this apartment. Regarding the subjective results, the participants reported feeling more pleasure in the curvilinear apartment, also perceiving a greater activation (excitement) than in the straight apartment. This last result is not in agreement with the objective evaluation, probably because the sample is made up of design students who have a more refined critical spirit, or simply because they took the questionnaire moments after the virtual experience and now have some difficulty in accessing their memory and emotions. The results obtained with the objective evaluation are in agreement with the data reported in the literature, carried out in studies with static experiences, which means that the methodology proposed in this article proved to be effective. This discovery may motivate future studies to use this methodology, in which the interaction with space is more natural.
There has been a rapid increase in ‘In-vehicle touchscreens’ usage over the last decade, particularly for information and entertainment functions. And because of the dynamic interface functionality, the touchscreen becomes a major attraction for the automobile industry. As a result, today most of the car manufacturer uses touchscreen instead of static push buttons. For display screen locations, there have been two legacy display locations in the car. One is a ‘Head-up display’ and ‘Head-down display’. Head- up display is similar to jet plans mounted on top of the instrument panel board and head- down display - located on the car console. However, the HUD position won't work for touchscreen devices since the touchscreen required direct touch input from the driver for which HUD location either blocking the road view or out of the driver's reach. Besides, there are numbers of possibilities for HDD locations to enhance driver’s interaction and driving experience.
In the research study, we are evaluating 8 different possible “in-vehicle touch-screen designs”. (2 HDD locations for touch screen display- Top & Middle, 2 different main menu layouts- Horizontal & Vertical, 2 screen mount positions- Fixed screen vs Tilted screen according to user preference). The study focused on assessing possibilities for different HDD locations within proximity of the driver. This experiment aims to find the
most effective and efficient touchscreen position with the least possible discomfort and distraction. Participants were instructed to perform a series of different Music, A/C, Seat control tasks on the developed In-vehicle infotainment prototype in the experiment. The experiment tasks were focused on controlled and real-life task-based scenarios.
Although many previous researchers have examined how visual cues (e.g., colors, typefaces, numbers) influence consumers’ judgments of food products, little is known about whether and how shapes affect food judgments and preferences. This research examined the healthy-angular, unhealthy-circular association in consumers’ memory and its implications for consumer behavior. Using six studies, we demonstrated that consumers tend to associate angular (vs. circular) shapes with healthy (vs. unhealthy) products and such association leads to a fit effect on consumers’ food preferences. Specifically, the awareness of healthy food (vs. unhealthy food) increases consumers’ preferences for the product option with an angular shape (vs. circular shape); Meanwhile, the awareness of angular shapes (vs. circular shapes) increases preferences for the healthier food option. We also identified the sense of feeling right as the mechanism underlying the fit effect. The findings suggest innovative visual marketing strategies for retailers, manufactures, and policymakers.
Given the large proportion of time spent by the average person indoors, it is imperative to have an understanding of the impacts of long-term and immersive exposure to a variety of architectural features in order to develop a holistic understanding of the impact of building architecture on human function, health, and wellbeing. This review article identifies and categorizes the elements of building architecture that have been demonstrated through empirical research to affect human psychological and physiological function. The architectural stimuli in question are limited to those for which a biological, and thus evolutionary, response has been empirically demonstrated. The intention is to identify architectural stimuli for which responses are biologically ingrained to ensure their applicability both cross-culturally and independent of personal experience. The research indicating the impacts of the built environment on human psychology and physiology is extensive and robust in certain areas and weaker in others. Architectural design features involving light, colour, complexity, viewing nature, olfaction, audition, and some forms of geometry, have been demonstrated to influence human behaviour, health, happiness, and physiological function in myriad ways. However, there are many unsubstantiated affirmations in the literature as to the effects of pareidolia, thigmotaxis, object affordance, the Golden Rectangle, and somatosensory stimuli in architecture. Thus, it has been demonstrated that architecture can impact human health, happiness, and physiological function, and be leveraged to produce specific physical and behavioral outcomes, however, further research is required to validate much of the conjecture currently found in the literature.
Digital images taken by mobile phones are the most frequent class of images created today. Due to their omnipresence and the many ways they are encountered, they require a specific focus in research. However, to date, there is no systematic compilation of the various factors that may determine our evaluations of such images, and thus no explanation of how users select and identify relatively "better" or "worse" photos. Here, we propose a theoretical taxonomy of factors influencing the aesthetic appeal of mobile phone photographs. Beyond addressing relatively basic/universal image characteristics, perhaps more related to fast (bottom-up) perceptual processing of an image, we also consider factors involved in the slower (top-down) re-appraisal or deepened aesthetic appreciation of an image. We span this taxonomy across specific types of picture genres commonly taken-portraits of other people, selfies, scenes and food. We also discuss the variety of goals, uses, and contextual aspects of users of mobile phone photography. As a working hypothesis, we propose that two main decisions are often made with mobile phone photographs: (1) Users assess images at a first glance-by swiping through a stack of images-focusing on visual aspects that might be decisive to classify them from "low quality" (too dark, out of focus) to "acceptable" to, in rare cases, "an exceptionally beautiful picture." (2) Users make more deliberate decisions regarding one's "favorite" picture or the desire to preserve or share a picture with others, which are presumably tied to aspects such as content, framing, but also culture or personality, which have largely been overlooked in empirical research on perception of photographs. In sum, the present review provides an overview of current focal areas and gaps in research and offers a working foundation for upcoming research on the perception of mobile phone photographs as well as future developments in the fields of image recording and sharing technology.
Previous research has shown that face masks impair the ability to perceive social information and the readability of emotions. These studies mostly explored the effect of standard medical, often white, masks on emotion recognition. However, in reality, many individuals prefer masks with different styles. We investigated whether the appearance of the mask (pattern: angular vs. curvy and color: black vs. white) affected the recognition of emotional states. Participants were asked to identify the emotions on faces covered by masks with different designs. The presence of masks resulted in decreasing accuracy and confidence and increasing reaction times, indicating that masks impair emotion recognition. There were no significant effects of angularity versus curvature or color on emotion recognition, which suggests that mask design may not impair the recognition beyond the effect of mere mask wearing. Besides, we found relationships between individual difference variables such as mask wearing attitudes, mask design preferences, individual traits and emotion recognition. The majority of participants demonstrated positive attitudes toward mask wearing and preferred non-patterned black and white masks. Preferences for white masks were associated with better emotion recognition of masked faces. In contrast, those with negative attitudes toward masks showed marginally poorer performance in emotion recognition for masked faces, and preferred patterned more than plain masks, perhaps viewing masks as a fashion item rather than a necessity. Moreover, preferences to wear patterned masks were negatively related to actual wearing of masks indoors and perceived risks of COVID.
When viewing objects depicted in a frame, observers prefer to view large objects like cars in larger sizes and smaller objects like cups in smaller sizes. That is, the visual size of an object that “looks best” is linked to its typical physical size in the world. Why is this the case? One intuitive possibility is that these preferences are driven by semantic knowledge: For example, when we recognize a sofa, we access our knowledge about its real-world size, and this influences what size we prefer to view the sofa within a frame. However, might visual processing play a role in this phenomenon—that is, do visual features that are related to big and small objects look better at big and small visual sizes, respectively, even when observers do not have explicit access to semantic knowledge about the objects? To test this possibility, we used “texform” images, which are synthesized versions of recognizable objects, which critically retain local perceptual texture and coarse contour information, but are no longer explicitly recognizable. To test for visual size preferences, we first used a size adjustment task, and the results were equivocal. However, clear results were obtained using a two-interval forced choice task, in which each texform was presented at the preferred visual size of its corresponding original image, and a visual size slightly bigger or smaller. Observers consistently selected the texform presented at the canonical visual size as the more aesthetically pleasing one. An additional control experiment ruled out alternative explanations related to size priming effects. These results suggest that the preferred visual size of an object depends not only on explicit knowledge of its real-world size, but also can be evoked by mid-level visual features that systematically covary with an object's real-world size.
Polygon tilings in natural and man-made objects show great variety. Unlike previous studies that have mainly focused on their classification and production methods, this study aimed at exploring factors that may contribute to the perceived beauty of convex polygon tilings. We analyze the dimensions of regularity, curvature, and density, as well as individual differences. Triangle tilings and hexagon tilings were tested in Experiment 1 and 2, respectively. The results showed that the perceived beauty of convex polygon tilings can be enhanced by higher levels of regularity and nonobvious local curvature. Surprisingly, the effect of density appeared to be different, with the dense triangle tilings and the less dense hexagon tilings scoring higher than the reverse. We discuss a possible explanation based on trypophobia caused by different types of polygons, as well as the observers’ personality trait of agreeableness.
The shape of a taillight not only improves the safety features of cars, but also provides a vast range of design options for vehicle designers. Moreover, it is regarded as a powerful design element of cars. This study aims to investigate the aesthetic preferences of consumers for taillight shape design and provide insights on visually appealing shapes for vehicle designers and manufacturers. The experiment used in this study consisted of bottom-up and top-down attentional processes that used an integrated eye-tracking method with self-report. The results showed that a taillight shape with contour features or medium length was more aesthetically preferred by consumers. Additionally, horizontal taillight shapes were more preferred compared to vertical taillight shapes. Taillight shape design insights can help in creating visually appealing rear-end designs by not only enhancing the aesthetic appearance of vehicles but also by helping in creating a unique visual signature for the brand.
The socio-emotional condition during the COVID-19 pandemic subsidises the (re)modulation of interactive neural circuits underlying risk assessment behaviour at the physical, emotional, and social levels. Experiences of social isolation, exclusion, or affective loss are generally considered some of the most “painful” things that people endure. The threats of social disconnection are processed by some of the same neural structures that process basic threats to survival. The lack of social connection can be “painful” due to an overlap in the neural circuitry responsible for both physical and emotional pain related to feelings of social rejection. Indeed, many of us go to great lengths to avoid situations that may engender these experiences. Accordingly, this work focuses on pandemic times; the somatisation mentioned above seeks the interconnection and/or interdependence between neural systems related to emotional and cognitive processes such that a person involved in an aversive social environment becomes aware of himself, others, and the threatening situation experienced and takes steps to avoid daily psychological and neuropsychiatric effects. Social distancing during isolation evokes the formation of social distress, increasing the intensity of learned fear that people acquire, consequently enhancing emotional and social pain.
Humans search for, identify, and interact with objects efficiently, utilizing not only the visual characteristics of the object itself but also contextual information to generate optimal predictions about objects in scenes. Over the course of our lives, we have acquired knowledge regarding co-occurring local objects as well as the global scene contexts in which they are usually encountered, creating strong predictions regarding what objects are typically found where in our environment. A number of studies from the last decades have characterized how such knowledge may guide attention in scene viewing and modulate object perception, using diverse methodologies like psychophysics, eye tracking, and neurophysiology, with various degrees of realism ranging from on-screen experiments via virtual reality to real-world studies. Some recent work has focused on investigating what “ingredients” of scenes actually influence object search and perception. Scenes tend to be hierarchically organized with some objects—so-called “anchor objects”—holding stronger predictions than others. Apart from meaningful objects, global scene properties (e.g., spatial layout or texture) have been shown to predict object identity. In order to tease apart the influence of such ingredients, large-scale databases and machine learning techniques have become increasingly popular. Here, we review recent advances in the field that help to better capture human efficiency in real-world scene and object perception, particularly focusing on which contextual information we take advantage of most and when. Further, we explore how these findings could be useful in pushing computer vision further ahead and how computer vision could mutually further our understanding of human visual perception.
Metal music has a signifying visual aesthetic or so-called visual code. In this article, I examine the significance of four primitive visual properties that characterize the code. I propose that the propensity for visual artefacts of metal music to depict low luminance, low colourfulness, redness and angular shapes is because these properties can act as subtle threat cues. As metal music has a preoccupation with threatening themes and sounds, these four properties provide concordant visual information about the affective attributes of the genre. After reviewing the supporting psychological evidence, I conduct a quantitative test of this proposal by comparing album covers from extreme metal bands to those from children’s music, two genres that are opposed to one another in their embrace of a threatening atmosphere. The results indicate that extreme metal album covers are darker, less colourful, redder and feature more angular shapes compared with their children’s counterparts, which suggests that these properties are relied upon to communicate a clear threat signal.
We hypothesized that attitudes characterized by a strong association between the attitude object and an evaluation of that object are capable of being activated from memory automatically upon mere presentation of the attitude object. We used a priming procedure to examine the extent to which the mere presentation of an attitude object would facilitate the latency with which subjects could indicate whether a subsequently presented target adjective had a positive or a negative connotation. Across three experiments, facilitation was observed on trials involving evaluatively congruent primes (attitude objects) and targets, provided that the attitude object possessed a strong evaluative association. In Experiments 1 and 2, preexperimentally strong and weak associations were identified via a measurement procedure. In Experiment 3, the strength of the object-evaluation association was manipulated. The results indicated that attitudes can be automatically activated and that the strength of the objectevaluation association determines the likelihood of such automatic activation. The implications of these findings for a variety of issues regarding attitudes—including their functional value, stability, effects on later behavior, and measurement—are discussed.
Recent evolutionary theory has argued that what people find “beautiful” is not arbitrary, but rather has evolved over millions of years of hominid sensory, perceptual, and cognitive evolution. Sensations that have adaptive value (i.e., that enhance safety, survival, and reproduction) often become aesthetically preferred. One purpose of the current study was to present a personality and social attitude template for persons who prefer a relatively recent and generally unappreciated form of art, namely abstract art. One hundred and four college participants (68 female) completed personality (openness and experience seeking) and social attitude questionnaires and recorded their preference for 15 realistic, 15 ambiguous, and 15 abstract works of art. Results showed that open participants preferred every form of art presented, but that this difference increased as the art became more abstract. In addition, those with attitudes more tolerant of political liberalism and drug use preferred abstract art the most.
The accessibility of a category in memory has been shown to influence the selection and interpretation of social information. The present experiment examined the possibility that information relevant to a trait category (hostility) presented outside of conscious awareness can temporarily increase that category's accessibility. 108 male undergraduates initially performed a vigilance task in which they were exposed unknowingly to single words. Either 0, 20, or 80% of those words were semantically related to hostility. In an unrelated 2nd task, 20 Ss read a behavioral description of a stimulus person (SP) that was ambiguous regarding hostility and then rated the SP on several trait dimensions. The amount of processing Ss gave to the hostile information and the negativity of their ratings of the SP both were reliably and positively related to the proportion of hostile words to which they were exposed. Several control conditions confirmed that the words were not consciously perceived. It is concluded that social stimuli of which people are not consciously aware can influence conscious judgments. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Black is viewed as the color of evil and death in virtually all cultures. With this association in mind, we were interested in whether a cue as subtle as the color of a person's clothing might have a significant impact on his or her behavior. To test this possibility, we examined whether professional football and ice hockey teams that wear black uniforms are more aggressive than those that wear nonblack uniforms. An analysis of the penalty records of the National Football League and the National Hockey League indicate that teams with black uniforms in both sports ranked near the top of their leagues in penalties throughout the period of study. On those occasions when a team switched from nonblack to black uniforms, the switch was accompanied by an immediate increase in penalties. The results of two laboratory experiments indicate that this finding can be attributed to both social perception and self-perception processes--that is, to the biased judgments of referees and to the increased aggressiveness of the players themselves. Our discussion focuses on the theoretical implications of these data for an understanding of the variable, or "situated," nature of the self.
We hypothesized that attitudes characterized by a strong association between the attitude object and an evaluation of that object are capable of being activated from memory automatically upon mere presentation of the attitude object. We used a priming procedure to examine the extent to which the mere presentation of an attitude object would facilitate the latency with which subjects could indicate whether a subsequently presented target adjective had a positive or a negative connotation. Across three experiments, facilitation was observed on trials involving evaluatively congruent primes (attitude objects) and targets, provided that the attitude object possessed a strong evaluative association. In Experiments 1 and 2, preexperimentally strong and weak associations were identified via a measurement procedure. In Experiment 3, the strength of the object-evaluation association was manipulated. The results indicated that attitudes can be automatically activated and that the strength of the object-evaluation association determines the likelihood of such automatic activation. The implications of these findings for a variety of issues regarding attitudes--including their functional value, stability, effects on later behavior, and measurement--are discussed.
The authors conducted an experiment to test a theoretical explanation of social facilitation based on the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat. Participants mastered 1 of 2 tasks and subsequently performed either the mastered (i.e., well-learned) or the unlearned task either alone or with an audience while cardiovascular responses were recorded. Cardiovascular responses of participants performing a well-learned task in the presence of others fit the challenge pattern (i.e., increased cardiac response and decreased vascular resistance), whereas cardiovascular responses of participants performing an unlearned task in the presence of others fit the threat pattern (i.e., increased cardiac response and increased vascular resistance), confirming the authors' hypotheses and the applicability of the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat to explain these results.
The majority of the research related to visual recognition has so far focused on bottom-up analysis, where the input is processed in a cascade of cortical regions that analyze increasingly complex information. Gradually more studies emphasize the role of top-down facilitation in cortical analysis, but it remains something of a mystery how such processing would be initiated. After all, top-down facilitation implies that high-level information is activated earlier than some relevant lower-level information. Building on previous studies, I propose a specific mechanism for the activation of top-down facilitation during visual object recognition. The gist of this hypothesis is that a partially analyzed version of the input image (i.e., a blurred image) is projected rapidly from early visual areas directly to the prefrontal cortex (PFC). This coarse representation activates in the PFC expectations about the most likely interpretations of the input image, which are then back-projected as an "initial guess" to the temporal cortex to be integrated with the bottom-up analysis. The top-down process facilitates recognition by substantially limiting the number of object representations that need to be considered. Furthermore, such a rapid mechanism may provide critical information when a quick response is necessary.
This paper explores theoretical issues in ergonomics related to semantics and the emotional content of design. The aim is to find answers to the following questions: how to design products triggering "happiness" in one's mind; which product attributes help in the communication of positive emotions; and finally, how to evoke such emotions through a product. In other words, this is an investigation of the "meaning" that could be designed into a product in order to "communicate" with the user at an emotional level. A literature survey of recent design trends, based on selected examples of product designs and semantic applications to design, including the results of recent design awards, was carried out in order to determine the common attributes of their design language. A review of Good Design Award winning products that are said to convey and/or evoke emotions in the users has been done in order to define good design criteria. These criteria have been discussed in relation to user emotional responses and a selection of these has been given as examples.
We propose that aesthetic pleasure is a function of the perceiver's processing dynamics: The more fluently perceivers can process an object, the more positive their aesthetic response. We review variables known to influence aesthetic judgments, such as figural goodness, figure-ground contrast, stimulus repetition, symmetry, and prototypicality, and trace their effects to changes in processing fluency. Other variables that influence processing fluency, like visual or semantic priming, similarly increase judgments of aesthetic pleasure. Our proposal provides an integrative framework for the study of aesthetic pleasure and sheds light on the interplay between early preferences versus cultural influences on taste, preferences for both prototypical and abstracted forms, and the relation between beauty and truth. In contrast to theories that trace aesthetic pleasure to objective stimulus features per se, we propose that beauty is grounded in the processing experiences of the perceiver, which are in part a function of stimulus properties.
First impressions of people's personalities are often formed by using the visual appearance of their faces. Defining how quickly these impressions can be formed has critical implications for understanding social interactions and for determining the visual properties used to shape them. To study impression formation independent of emotional cues, threat judgments were made on faces with a neutral expression. Consequently, participants' judgments pertained to the personality rather than to a certain temporary emotional state (e.g., anger). The results demonstrate that consistent first impressions can be formed very quickly, based on whatever information is available within the first 39 ms. First impressions were less consistent under these conditions when the judgments were about intelligence, suggesting that survival-related traits are judged more quickly. The authors propose that low spatial frequencies mediate this swift formation of threat judgments and provide evidence that supports this hypothesis.
Although questions about how people respond to others' nonverbal cues have always been central to the study of nonverbal communication, the study of individual diVerences in accuracy of nonverbal cue processing, or interpersonal sensitivity, is a more recent endeavor. This chapter focuses on assessment of individual diVerences, emphasizing the major paradigms and instruments for assessing accuracy of nonverbal cue processing, and discussing characteristics of the stimuli and judgment methodologies (e.g. what state or trait is being judged, who is being judged, what cue channels are available, whether the cues are posed or spontaneous, whether judgment is done in live interaction or from standard stimuli, what judgment format is used, what criteria and methods are used for scoring). Relative advantages of diVerent approaches are discussed in terms of psychometric qualities, validity, and utility.
In the mere-repeated-exposure paradigm, an individual is repeatedly exposed to a particular stimulus object, and the researcher records the individual's emerging preference for that object. Vast literature on the mere-repeated-exposure effect shows it to be a robust phenomenon that cannot be explained by an appeal to recognition memory or perceptual fluency. The effect has been demonstrated across cultures, species, and diverse stimulus domains. It has been obtained even when the stimuli exposed are not accessible to the participants’ awareness, and even prenatally. The repeated-exposure paradigm can be regarded as a form of classical conditioning if we assume that the absence of aversive events constitutes the unconditioned stimulus. Empirical research shows that a benign experience of repetition can in and of itself enhance positive affect, and that such affect can become attached not only to stimuli that have been exposed but also to similar stimuli that have not been previously exposed, and to totally distinct stimuli as well. Implications for affect as a fundamental and independent process are discussed in the light of neuroanatomical evidence.
Do we read character in faces? What information do faces actually provide? Why do we associate certain facial qualities with particular character traits? What are the social and psychological consequences of reading character in faces? Zebrowitz unmasks the face and provides the first systematic, scientific account of our tendency to judge people by their appearance. Offering an in-depth analysis of two appearance qualities that influence our impressions of others, babyfaceness" and attractiveness", and an account of these impressions, Zebrowitz has written an accessible and valuable book for professionals and general readers alike.The assumption that people's faces provide a window to their inner nature has a long and distinguished history, eloquently expressed in the works of ancient philosophers, like Aristotle, and great writers, like Shakespeare. Zebrowitz examines this assumption, focusing on four central points. She shows that facial appearance, particularly babyfaceness and attractiveness, has a strong impact on how we perceive an individual's character traits and on social outcomes in the workplace, in the criminal justice system, and in other settings. She proposes that facial stereotypes derive from evolutionarily adaptive reactions to useful information that faces can provide. She assesses the accuracy of facial stereotypes in light of plausible links between appearance and character. Finally, Zebrowitz suggests ways to counteract the consequences of reading faces.
Two studies examined the hypothesis that geometric patterns in the facial expressions of anger and happiness provide information that permits observers to recognize the meaning of threat and warmth. A 1st study sought to isolate the configural properties by examining whether large-scale body movements encode affect-related meanings in similar ways. Results indicated that diagonal and angular body patterns convey threat, whereas round body patterns convey warmth. In a 2nd study, a set of 3 experiments using models of simple geometric patterns revealed that acute angles with downward pointing vertices conveyed the meaning of threat and that roundedness conveyed the meaning of warmth. Human facial features exhibit these same geometric properties in displays of anger and happiness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
We report two studies in which the interplay between stimulus properties and perceiver characteristics in the appreciation car interiors was investigated. In Experiment 1 three design components, complexity, curvature and innovativeness, which are all thought to affect design appreciation were combined in a fully factorial design. All dimensions were confirmed to affect ratings, and curvature and innovativeness particularly affected the attractiveness ratings. Curved and non-innovative designs were generally preferred. Moreover, participants who were particularly interested in art were more sensitive to curvature and innovativeness. In Experiment 2 two dimensions of Experiment 1 were replicated using similar stimuli. Moreover, the specific effects of a design knowledge treatment were investigated. Results replicated the preference for curved and non-innovative (rather classic) designs. The treatment had only small effects, which support a general rather than dimension-specific effects of cognitive pre-information. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
3 experiments were undertaken to investigate the ostensible subliminal effects found with "below threshold" exposures of pictorial stimuli. Following the assumptions of the "part-cue response-characteristic" model, it was hypothesized that: (1) pictorial stimuli used in earlier studies differed in amount of structural attributes available to Ss, (2) such structural cues are responded to differentially by Ss, and (3) with the thematic content held constant, systematic difference in perceptual behavior is a function of variations in structural attributes (e.g., angularity) by the subliminal stimuli. The results confirmed these hypotheses, and the part-cue response-characteristic model remains a tenable explanation of the perceptual behavior ascribed to subliminal perception.
Implicit (unconscious) gender stereotyping in fame judgments was tested with an adaptation of a procedure developed by L. L. Jacoby, C. M. Kelley, J. Brown, and J. Jasechko (1989). In Experiments 1-4, participants pronounced 72 names of famous and nonfamous men and women, and 24 or 48 hr later made fame judgments in response to the 72 familiar and 72 unfamiliar famous and nonfamous names. These first experiments, in which signal detection analysis was used to assess implicit stereotypes, demonstrate that the gender bias (greater assignment of fame to male than female names) was located in the use of a lower criterion (beta) for judging fame of familiar male than female names. Experiments 3 and 4 also showed that explicit expressions of sexism or stereotypes were uncorrelated with the observed implicit gender bias in fame judgments.
Dimensions in appreciation of car in-terior design Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in the perceiver’s processing experience? Personality and Social Psychology Review Mere exposure: A gateway to the subliminal Reading faces: Window to the soul?
- H Leder
- C Carbon
- R Reber
- N Schwarz
- P Winkielman
Leder, H., & Carbon, C. (2005). Dimensions in appreciation of car in-terior design. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19, 603–618. Reber, R., Schwarz, N., & Winkielman, P. (2004). Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in the perceiver’s processing experience? Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8, 364– 382. Zajonc, R.B. (2001). Mere exposure: A gateway to the subliminal. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10, 224–228. Zebrowitz, L.A. (1997). Reading faces: Window to the soul? Boulder, CO: Westview Press. (RECEIVED 10/6/05; REVISION ACCEPTED 12/1/05; FINAL MATERIALS RECEIVED 12/5/05) 648 Volume 17—Number 8 Humans Prefer Curved Visual Objects
Very first impressions. Emotion Automatic information process-ing and social perception: The influence of trait information pre-sented outside of conscious awareness on impression formation
- M Bar
- M Neta
- H Linz
- J A Bargh
- P Pietromonaco
Bar, M., Neta, M., & Linz, H. (in press). Very first impressions. Emotion. Bargh, J.A., & Pietromonaco, P. (1982). Automatic information process-ing and social perception: The influence of trait information pre-sented outside of conscious awareness on impression formation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43, 437–449.