We like what we know

Darda and colleagues share that they “we explored Northern American and Indian participants’ aesthetic judgments and preferences for abstract and representational artworks. . . . no evidence was found for an ingroup bias . . . when American abstract artworks were assigned with fictional American, Indian, Chinese, or Turkish artist names. Aesthetic ratings for artworks were similar across Indian and American participants, irrespective of the cultural label they were assigned. . . . An ingroup preference for Indian and American/European representational artworks was found in Experiment 3—participants preferred artworks depicting content from their own culture compared to another. Effects across all experiments persisted when controlling for participants’ age, education, art experience, and openness to experience. The modulation of art perception and appreciation by contextual information may be flexible and more influenced by cultural content depicted in artworks than simple cultural framing.”

Kohinoor Darda, Alexander Christensen, and Anjan Chatterjee.  “Does the Frame of an Artwork Matter? Cultural Framing and Aesthetic Judgments for Abstract and Representational Art.”  Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, in press, https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000569