Influence Of Environment Physical Order On Aesthetic Pleasure And Its Mechanism

When appreciating natural scenery,architecture,artworks and other artificial objects,people will have certain emotional reactions,such as pleasurable experiences,namely aesthetic pleasure.Artworks,as the main aesthetic objects of human beings,have been widely concerned by researchers.We cannot do anything without the surrounding environment when conducting aesthetic activities.Previous researchers took the environment as one of the important factors affecting aesthetics,and mainly focused on the specific places such as museums and galleries,while ignoring the impact of physical environment order in space.Artworks are usually placed clean and orderly.However,does orderly environment really contribute to aesthetic appreciation? Does a disorderly environment look bad at first sight? How the order clues contained in the environment play a role in aesthetic activities is worthy of further discussion.The present study used figurative and abstract artworks as experiment stimulus,as well as behavioral experiments and ERP technology to explore the cognitive mechanisms,processing processes,and individual difference by which physical environment order affects aesthetic pleasure through three studies.Study 1 firstly screened he study materials-figurative and abstract artworks,and then explored the effect of physical environment order on aesthetic pleasure of figurative and abstract artworks and found that the disorder environment only affected the ratings of abstract art,but not figurative art.Therefore,Study 2 applied only abstract artworks as experimental materials and used the fluency of artworks as the independent variable to explore the effects of physical environment order on aesthetic pleasure of abstract artworks with different fluencies,and combined with ERPs technology to explore the cognitive mechanisms and the specific stages of aesthetic processing.It was found that physical environment order could moderate the effect of fluency on aesthetic pleasure,and could affect aesthetic pleasure through fluency change.The results of ERPs experiments showed that there was no significant difference in P2 and N2 amplitude between order and disorder conditions,but in disorder condition,low fluency artworks induced significantly higher P3 and LPP amplitudes than high fluency.Study3 used the individual’s sense of control as a trait variable to explore whether physical environment order affects aesthetic pleasure moderated by the sense of control.It was showed that individuals’ aesthetic pleasure in disorder condition was significantly higher than that in order condition regardless of the score of sense of control.Based on the results of the study,the following conclusions are :(1)The physical environment order has a significant effect on the aesthetic pleasure of abstract artworks,and the aesthetic pleasure in disorder environment is higher than that in order environment.(2)The physical environment order has a greater impact on low-fluency artworks than the high-fluency,and control processing in disordered environment can reduce the disfluency and improve more aesthetic pleasure.(3)The sense of control can not moderate the effect of physical environmental order on aesthetic pleasure,but the two variables have independent mechanisms influencing aesthetic pleasure.This study preliminarily reveals some relations betwwen physical environmnet order and aesthetic pleasure,thus providing a theoretical basis for interfering with environmnetal order and improving the aesthetic experience of artworks.