Semantic Representation and Emotional Awareness in Chinese Painting Viewing: Is There a Difference Between Landscape Painting and Figure Painting?

TL;DR

This study explores how people process and emotionally respond to Chinese landscape versus figure paintings, finding differences in semantic and emotional engagement.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel comparison of semantic representation and emotional awareness in Chinese painting appreciation using vocabulary generation and IAT.

Findings

Figure paintings elicited more emotional association words than landscape paintings.

Participants had faster response times in incompatible joint tasks when viewing paintings.

Semantic and emotional processing in painting appreciation may be independent of painting type.

Abstract

The artistic expression inherent in Chinese paintings serves as a conduit for the artists’ emotional and cognitive expression. However, current research lacks consensus regarding the distinct psychological mechanisms underlying the appreciation of Chinese painting genres (landscape vs. figure paintings). This study—employing a vocabulary generation task and the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to compare semantic representation and emotional awareness during participants’ viewing these two types of paintings—aims to elucidate potential disparities in aesthetic processing. In Experiment 1, although both types of paintings produced an abundance of content words, figure paintings elicited a greater number of emotional association words than landscape paintings. Meanwhile, Experiment 2 demonstrated faster response times for an incompatible joint task versus a compatible joint task. These findings collectively suggest that the aesthetic of paintings may engage automatic processes, with the effects on semantic representation and emotional awareness appearing to be independent of the type of paintings. The predominance of content processing over emotional response may be attributed to the temporal characteristics of emotional arousal.

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