Culture and aesthetic preference: Comparing the attention to context of East Asians and European Americans.

Abstract

This dissertation investigated cultural variations in the aesthetics of East Asians and Euro-Americans. Previous findings by Masuda and Nisbett (2001) indicate that Japanese are more sensitive to contextual information than Americans. The dissertation extends and expands this research by investigating cultural variations in drawing and photographic styles as well as cultural preferences in the aesthetic display of pictorial information. The project assumes that cultural variations are mediated by cultural differences in patterns of attention. I hypothesize that East Asians are more likely than European Americans both to include contextual information when they produce visual materials and to prefer pictorial information in context rather than independent of context when they confront visual materials. Study 1 analyzed traditional pictorial stylistics. The results indicated that East Asian landscape paintings place horizon lines higher than Euro-American paintings place them. Also, the size of models in East Asian portraits is smaller than that in Euro-American paintings. The findings suggest that East Asian paintings are more likely than Euro-American paintings to emphasize contextual information. Study 2 further examined whether East Asians and Americans maintain their traditional pictorial styles. The results indicated that, when participants were asked to draw a landscape picture, East Asians were more likely than Euro-Americans to draw a horizon in a high position. In addition, when participants were asked to take portrait pictures of a model, East Asians were more likely than Americans to set the zoom function so as to make the model small. The findings suggest that contemporary members of particular cultures, through their experiences in those cultures, maintain traditional aesthetics. Studies 3 and 4 further investigated aesthetic preferences in the context of portraiture. The results indicated that Japanese preferred portraits with relatively small models and with wide backgrounds and that they were accepting of blurred backgrounds. In contrast, Americans preferred portraits with relatively large models and with narrow and sharp backgrounds. Overall, these findings suggest that East Asians were more likely than Euro-Americans to be sensitive to contextual information. Based on these findings, I discuss the relationships among patterns of attention, cultural resources, and aesthetic preferences.