Aesthetic preferences for prototypical movements in human actions

Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications

Original Article

Yi-Chia Chen¹  Hongjing Lu²  Frank Pollick³ 

[1] Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA;Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA;Department of Statistics, University of California, Los Angeles, USA;School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK;

关键词: Category;    Prototype;    Aesthetics;    Biological motion;    Emotion;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s41235-023-00510-0

 received in 2023-02-06, accepted in 2023-08-05,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

A commonplace sight is seeing other people walk. Our visual system specializes in processing such actions. Notably, we are not only quick to recognize actions, but also quick to judge how elegantly (or not) people walk. What movements appear appealing, and why do we have such aesthetic experiences? Do aesthetic preferences for body movements arise simply from perceiving others’ positive emotions? To answer these questions, we showed observers different point-light walkers who expressed neutral, happy, angry, or sad emotions through their movements and measured the observers’ impressions of aesthetic appeal, emotion positivity, and naturalness of these movements. Three experiments were conducted. People showed consensus in aesthetic impressions even after controlling for emotion positivity, finding prototypical walks more aesthetically pleasing than atypical walks. This aesthetic prototype effect could be accounted for by a computational model in which walking actions are treated as a single category (as opposed to multiple emotion categories). The aesthetic impressions were affected both directly by the objective prototypicality of the movements, and indirectly through the mediation of perceived naturalness. These findings extend the boundary of category learning, and hint at possible functions for action aesthetics.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Psychonomic Society 2023

【 图 表 】

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