The detail is more pleasant than the whole: Global and local prime affect esthetic appreciation of artworks showing whol
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SHORT REPORT
The detail is more pleasant than the whole: Global and local prime affect esthetic appreciation of artworks showing whole-part ambiguity Maddalena Boccia 1,2
&
Paola Guariglia 3 & Laura Piccardi 1,2 & Giulia De Martino 3 & Anna Maria Giannini 1
# The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Esthetic experience is the result of the coordination of different cognitive processes. It has been widely reported that top-down processes of orienting of attention interact with bottom-up perceptual facilitation occurring during esthetic experience of artworks. Here we use whole-part ambiguity as a tool to test the effect of global and local prime on esthetic appreciation of complex visual artworks. To this aim 139 healthy young individuals completed an esthetic judgment of Arcimboldo’s ambiguous artworks, which were preceded by a local or global prime. Their perceptual style was also assessed using a Navon task. We found that local prime significantly enhanced esthetic appreciation of ambiguous portraits. Also, we found that prime level interacted with individual’s perceptual style: participants showing local perceptual style liked less ambiguous portraits when they were preceded by global prime. Overall, the present findings shed some light on the processes involved in esthetic experience, pointing towards a pivotal role of re-direction of attention towards perceptual features of the artworks and its interaction with individual factors, such as perceptual style. Keywords Perceptual ambiguity . Esthetic attitude . Neuroesthetic . Perceptual preference . Global-local perception
Introduction Esthetic attitude has been proposed to involve an intentional shift from an automatic visuo-perceptual processing to an “esthetic state of mind,” which is more explicitly directed towards the sensory experience (Cupchik, 1992; Cupchik & Winston, 1996). Cela-Conde and colleagues (Cela-Conde et al., 2013) proposed that the esthetic attitude consists mainly of two distinct cognitive events, which take place at different time spans: an initial general appraisal of the esthetic qualities (i.e., the perception of a
* Maddalena Boccia [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, “Sapienza” University of Rome, Via dei Marsi, 78, 00185 Rome, Italy
2
Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy
3
Department of Human Science and Society, University of Enna “Kore”, Enna, Italy
visual stimulus as beautiful or not), which the authors call “esthetic appreciation sensu stricto” and a delayed appraisal of detailed aspects of the esthetic experience (i.e., whether it is interesting or original), which the authors call “esthetic appreciation sensu lato”. This idea is consistent with evidence from neuroimaging studies. Indeed, the esthetic appreciation sensu stricto has been found to rely on a network of areas encompassing occipital and frontal regions. Instead, the esthetic appreciation sensu lato mainly involves the activation of the default mode network (Cela-Conde et al., 2013). Ba
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