The effects of conscious conceptual processing on the aesthetic evaluations of visual images

Abstract

What kinds of objects elicit aesthetic responses from people? Prior studies suggest that automatic and unconscious conceptual processing, which occur when exposed to stimuli, influence aesthetic evaluations. However, as proposed by the dual-process model of recognition memory, there are two levels of conceptual processing: an automatic and unconscious level and a non-automatic and conscious level. We examine the effects of these two dissociable processes on aesthetic evaluations with the Remember/Know procedure. We hypothesize that remember judgments reflect “recollection” (a non-automatic and conscious level of conceptual process) and know judgments reflect “familiarity” (an automatic and unconscious level of conceptual process). During an incidental learning phase, participants were exposed to 70 images and, during a recognition phase, they made both remember/know judgments and aesthetic evaluations for images (35 old and 35 new). The results indicate that aesthetic evaluations were higher for images judged as remembered compared to those judged as known. These findings suggest that non-automatic and conscious conceptual processing influences aesthetic evaluations.