Title
Positive fEMG Patterns with Ambiguity in Paintings
Abstract
Whereas ambiguity in everyday life is often negatively evaluated, it is considered key in art appreciation. In a facial EMG study, we tested whether the positive role of visual ambiguity in paintings is reflected in a continuous affective evaluation on a subtle level. We presented ambiguous (disfluent) and non-ambiguous (fluent) versions of Magritte paintings and found that M. Zygomaticus major activation was higher and M. corrugator supercilii activation was lower for ambiguous than for non-ambiguous versions. Our findings reflect a positive continuous affective evaluation to visual ambiguity in paintings over the 5 s presentation time. We claim that this finding is indirect evidence for the hypothesis that visual stimuli classified as art, evoke a safe state for indulging into experiencing ambiguity, challenging the notion that processing fluency is generally related to positive affect.
Keywords
empirical aestheticsambiguityfEMGemotionfluency
Object type
Language
English [eng]
Persistent identifier
https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:869179
Appeared in
Title
Frontiers in Psychology
Volume
8
Publisher
Frontiers Media SA
Date issued
2017
Access rights
Rights statement
© 2017 Jakesch, Goller and Leder

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