Consistency of Likability to Objects across Views and Time

Human object recognition is largely independent of conditions in which objects are viewed, although affective impressions to the objects may be influenced by viewing conditions. To what degree does viewing condition alter our subjective likability to objects? We tested the effects of viewpoint (frontal view and three-quarter view) and viewing durations (100, 500, and 1000 msec) on the subjective likability to 32 common objects (e.g., vehicles, furniture, stationery). Participants observed the object images on the computer display and rated their likability of the objects by 7-point Likert scale. The viewing conditions affected the likability; the mean rated likability was higher for three-quarter view than for frontal view, and higher for longer duration. However, the object-wise correlations of rated likability were fairly high and significant between the object orientations and among the durations, indicating that the rank order of the objects were largely consistent across the viewing conditions. Our findings suggest that the mechanism for determining likability to visual objects may be composed of two components; one is sensitive to viewing condition and another is robust against viewing condition