Comparison study of differences for Asians and Westerners in Aesthetic Judgments and emotions using ancient Chinese paintings

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to find out how people from Western and eastern differ in their aesthetic preferences/judgments, as well as perception on emotions in ancient Chinese paintings. This study would investigate the cultural effects as well as low-level image properties (e.g., spatial frequency) on both perceptions of emotions and aesthetic judgments in two exposure time length. The results indicated that Asian made aesthetic judgments and emotional perceptions of the images based on lower spatial frequency, emphasized more on the contextual information related with the background of the image in the task of 3s. The western participants prefer salient objects with detailed information, they made aesthetic and emotion judgments of the paintings based on median to high spatial frequency in the task of 3s. But in the short exposure time of tasks, both Asians and Westerners made aesthetic judgments based on median to high spatial frequency as well as low spatial frequency. For perception of emotions in short time exposure of task, Asians made emotions judgment based on low spatial frequency whereas Westerners perceived emotions base on a median to high spatial frequency.