Effect of Formal Training on Consensus of Visual Aesthetic Appreciation

Abstract

Previous research has shown that the degree of aesthetic consensus (“shared taste”) across observers differs by visual aesthetic domain, being higher for natural kinds (faces and landscapes) and lower for cultural artifacts (artworks and architecture). This may arise because cultural artifacts have little relevance for most people’s daily behavior and thus do not motivate convergent learning. We examined the aesthetic preferences of students enrolled in training programs for design and architecture, and hypothesized that formal training in an artistic domain would lead to shifts in which features individuals use to aesthetically evaluate that domain, leading to changes in which images are preferred, and potentially, to an increase in shared taste (convergence) across individuals. 37 architecture and 25 design (visual communication) students were asked to look at pictures of architecture, fine art paintings and design posters and rate them on both a cognitive (“did you understand the image”) and aesthetic emotional scale (“were you touched by the image”), both at the beginning of their first semester (T1) and again at the beginning of their second semester (T2). While we did observe an initial domain-specific preference amongst design students (for design posters) and architecture students (for buildings), we did not find evidence for a domain-specific effect of training on consensus for aesthetic appeal. Rather, we found more generalized increases in consensus for understanding, and decreases in consensus for aesthetic appeal for specific stimulus types. These findings suggest that a semester of domain-specific training accentuates the individuality of aesthetic judgments, an essential skill for design and architecture students.