ABSTRACT We report an experiment investigating how stimulus complexity and conceptual fluency (i.e., the ease of deriving meaning) influence aesthetic liking judgments for abstract artworks. We presented participants with paintings at two levels of complexity (high vs. low) and five levels of conceptual fluency (determined from a prior norming study) and requested separate ratings of beauty and creativity. Our predictions were derived from the PIA Model (Pleasure-Interest Model of Aesthetic Liking), which views aesthetic preferences as being formed by two, distinct fluency-based processes: an initial, automatic, stimulus-driven, default process and a subsequent, perceiver-driven deliberative process. A key trigger for deliberative processing is assumed to be disfluency at the default stage, as caused by factors such as visual complexity. We predicted that complexity and conceptual fluency would interact in determining aesthetic liking, with people preferring complex stimuli, but only when these are relatively easy to process conceptually. Our results supported this prediction for beauty judgments, although creativity judgments showed a curiously uniform profile. Nevertheless, the predictive capacity of the PIA Model in relation to beauty judgments attests to the explanatory strength of this default–interventionist theory of aesthetic liking. We conclude by noting important parallels between the PIA Model and the Revised Optimal Innovation Hypothesis, which likewise has broad reach in explaining how defaultness and non-defaultness affect pleasure across a range of linguistic and pictorial stimuli.

中文翻译：

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刺激复杂性和概念流畅性对抽象艺术审美判断的影响：默认干预主义解释的证据

摘要 我们报告了一项实验，该实验调查了刺激的复杂性和概念的流畅性（即理解意义的难易程度）如何影响对抽象艺术作品的审美喜好判断。我们向参与者展示了两个复杂程度（高与低）和五个概念流畅度（根据先前的规范研究确定）的绘画，并要求对美感和创造力进行单独评级。我们的预测源自 PIA 模型（审美喜好的愉悦兴趣模型），该模型将审美偏好视为由两个不同的基于流畅性的过程形成：初始的、自动的、刺激驱动的默认过程和随后的感知过程驱动的审议过程。由于视觉复杂性等因素引起的默认阶段的不流畅，假定了慎重处理的关键触发因素。我们预测，复杂性和概念流畅性会在决定审美喜好时相互作用，人们更喜欢复杂的刺激，但前提是这些刺激在概念上相对容易处理。我们的结果支持对美感判断的这一预测，尽管创造力判断显示出一种奇怪的统一特征。尽管如此，PIA 模型在审美判断方面的预测能力证明了这种默认干预主义审美喜好理论的解释力。最后，我们注意到 PIA 模型和修订后的最优创新假设之间的重要相似之处，同样在解释违约和非违约如何影响一系列语言和图像刺激的愉悦方面具有广泛的影响。