Presence of peer influence on cognitive process in the perception of abstract paintings

Abstract

This study is to investigate the presence of peer influence on personal preference to abstract paintings and also analyze the cognitive process eliciting changes in preference to paintings. 191 female participants without any particular background in the fine arts were presented with six paintings dating the 21st century with information which are designed for eliciting peer influence. The paintings had to be rated by the participants in term of personal preference to paintings and the information in terms of agreement, expertise, and informativeness. The results showed that personal preference to painting was significantly increased with individuals`` strongly and mild positive commentaries; commentaries from similar others and those from experts, but there was no significant difference of changes in participants`` preferences according to subject and the strength of writers`` emotional attitude of information. Furthermore, we found that several correlation of agreement, expertise, and informativeness with changes in preferences to paintings. Within similar emotional attitude of information, influence factors are different according to the strength of attitude. These findings suggest that peer influence can increase participants`` personal preferences to the paintings with the similar degree of expert``s, and they also revealed which factors from information elicit peer influence.