Moving the eye of the beholder. Motor components in vision determine aesthetic preference

Psychological Science
Sascha Topolinski

Abstract

Perception entails not only sensory input (e.g., merely seeing), but also subsidiary motor processes (e.g., moving the eyes); such processes have been neglected in research on aesthetic preferences. To fill this gap, the present research manipulated the fluency of perceptual motor processes independently from sensory input and predicted that this increased fluency would result in increased aesthetic preference for stimulus movements that elicited the same motor movements as had been previously trained. Specifically, addressing the muscles that move the eyes, I trained participants to follow a stimulus movement without actually seeing it. Experiment 1 demonstrated that ocular-muscle training resulted in the predicted increase in preference for trained stimulus movements compared with untrained stimulus movements, although participants had not previously seen any of the movements. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that actual motor matching and not perceptual similarity drove this effect. Thus, beauty may be not only in the eye of the beholder, but also in the eyes' movements.

References

Dec 8, 2004·Personality and Social Psychology Review : an Official Journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc·Rolf ReberPiotr Winkielman
Sep 21, 2006·Psychological Science·Piotr WinkielmanSteve Catty
Mar 17, 2007·Psychological Science·Sian L Beilock, Lauren E Holt
Jan 28, 2009·Psychological Science·Hyunjin Song, Norbert Schwarz
Mar 11, 2009·Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition·Sascha Topolinski, Fritz Strack
May 5, 2010·Journal of Personality and Social Psychology·Sascha Topolinski, Fritz Strack

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Citations

Mar 25, 2014·PloS One·Anna PecchinendaNicole Ruta
Oct 3, 2012·Brain and Cognition·Peggy SparenbergWolfgang Prinz
Sep 4, 2015·Acta Psychologica·Joël CretenetVincent Dru
Jun 2, 2015·Frontiers in Psychology·Sascha TopolinskiIris K Schneider
Apr 30, 2013·Consciousness and Cognition·Guido OrgsPatrick Haggard
Mar 13, 2015·Frontiers in Psychology·Sascha Topolinski, Fritz Strack
Oct 28, 2016·Acta Psychologica·Giti BakhtiariSascha Topolinski
Nov 10, 2012·Psychological Science·Helmut LederSascha Topolinski
Nov 13, 2012·I-Perception·Alexis MakinMarco Bertamini
Dec 21, 2017·Frontiers in Psychology·Florian LoffingNorbert Hagemann
Nov 12, 2020·Cognition & Emotion·Judith Gerten, Sascha Topolinski
Aug 25, 2021·British Journal of Psychology·Rebecca ChamberlainGuido Orgs

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