Another nasty blow for traditional question-and-answer research to find out what consumers think about aesthetic materials. From an ingenious experiment reported in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, we learn that:
“Two experiments examined whether appreciating art verbally would aesthetically confuse viewers. Participants were asked to verbalize why they either liked or disliked two different kinds of paintings; one piece was representational, the other piece was abstract. Those who verbalized their reasons for liking the artworks were more likely to prefer the representational painting, whereas those who verbalized their reasons for disliking the paintings were also more likely to dislike the representational painting. While it was easy to describe reasons for both liking and disliking representational art, the same proved difficult for abstract art. The findings suggest that due to its figurative qualities people will be encouraged to generate reasons to describe representational art, rather than abstract art, and that these reasons could potentially be biased and cause them to change their preferences in line with these reasons.”
This study was about fine art, but it applies to advertising and design, as well. To interpret, the more representational (i.e. ‘left-brained’) an ad may be, the more reasons respondents will find to like it. The more abstract (i.e., ‘right-brained’) the fewer reasons they’ll find to like it. Ads that are abstract and emotional are fighting an uphill battle in focus groups and surveys when they’re pitted against ads that are literal and logical.
