Similarities in Affective Processing and Aesthetic Preference of Visual, Auditory and Gustatory Stimuli

In the last few decades experimental aesthetics studies mainly focused on objective features of sensory stimuli in attempts to identify determinants of aesthetic preference. However, recent research has addressed the role of evaluative or affective meaning in aesthetic preference of sensory stimuli. Here we examined underlying structure of evaluative meaning for three types of sensory stimuli and the relations between obtained dimensions and aesthetic preference of stimuli from different sensory modalities. In three experiments participants assessed visual, auditory and gustatory stimuli on the aesthetic preference scale and on three instruments involving evaluative attributes people usually use to describe their subjective experience of visual, auditory and gustatory domains. The results of principal component analysis showed the same triple factorial structure for different sensory modalities: affective evaluation (pleasant, positive, relaxing), arousal (impressive, powerful, interesting), and cognitive evaluation (familiar, meaningful, regular). Obtained evaluative dimensions explained most of the variance in aesthetic preference for all three types of sensory stimuli. In particular, there was strong relation of affective and cognitive evaluation with aesthetic preference, while arousal demonstrated weaker relation. Finally, we proposed the view of aesthetic preference of sensory stimuli based on three underlying dimensions of affective meaning