Titles play an important role in shaping aesthetic experience, yet little is known about how the explicit label Untitled affects poetry appreciation. The present study examined whether explicitly indicating the absence of a title influences readers' aesthetic responses to poetry, and whether this effect varies as a function of individual differences. Across two online studies with Japanese participants, we compared poems labeled Untitled with poems presented without any displayed title (No-title), and, in Study 2, with poems presented with their Original titles. In Study 1, 400 participants were recruited and 357 were retained after exclusions. Participants read three poems under either the Untitled or No-title condition and rated aesthetic emotions, beauty, imagery, ambiguity, intention, romantic quality, and reading time. Relative to the No-title condition, the Untitled condition yielded significantly lower ratings for Aesthetic appeal, High- and Low-arousal positive emotions, Beauty, Imagery, and Romantic, as well as shorter Reading Time. Exploratory analyses suggested that some title effects varied as a function of attitudes toward ambiguity and prior poetry experience. In Study 2, 152 participants were recruited and 98 were retained after exclusions. Using a within-participants design, participants read nine poems in the Untitled, No-title, and Original title conditions and completed ratings of Aesthetic appeal, Epistemic emotions, Situation, Intention, Ambiguity, Meaningfulness, Interpretation, and Reading Time, along with a measure of multisensory imagery vividness. Compared with the Original title condition, the Untitled condition produced significantly lower ratings for Aesthetic appeal, Epistemic emotions, Situation, and Intention, and significantly higher Ambiguity. No reliable main effects were observed for Meaningfulness, Interpretation, or Reading Time. Exploratory analyses suggested that some title effects varied as a function of imagery vividness and prior poetry experience. Taken together, the findings suggest that the explicit label "Untitled" can shape poetry appreciation, particularly in contrast to original titles. Although Study 1 indicated that "Untitled" and No-title can produce different aesthetic responses, this contrast was not clearly replicated in Study 2. Thus, the distinction between "Untitled" and No-title should be understood as conceptually important but empirically context-dependent.
Although empirical aesthetics has extensively studied domains such as painting and music, fine-art photography remains underexplored as a distinct evaluative domain-particularly with regard to which criteria audiences actively involved in photography consider relevant and how evaluative approaches differ within this population. The present study therefore does not examine judgments of individual images but rather the perceived importance of criteria that viewers apply when assessing the artistic significance of photographs. In an anonymous online survey (data collection April to June 2024), N = 431 individuals actively involved in photography participated (233 professionals, 198 amateurs). Fourteen criteria were rated in terms of their importance; additionally, participants selected the three most important criteria from the set. A principal component analysis with Varimax rotation (KMO = .76; Bartlett's chi(2) = 1478.12, p < .001) initially yielded four components (57.6% explained variance), which were consolidated into three dimensions for subsequent reporting: aesthetic-emotional impact (alpha = .68), reflection/narrativity (alpha = .74), and uniqueness and technical excellence (alpha = .64). A k-means cluster analysis based on interest, knowledge, the three dimensions, as well as metacognitive and normative judgment aspects identified three viewer types: fine-art photography connoisseurs (39.4%), fine-art photography enthusiasts (39.9%), and occasional viewers (20.6%). Professional status was associated with segment membership but did not fully account for the observed heterogeneity. The findings indicate domain-specific multidimensionality in evaluative logics and pronounced heterogeneity among people actively involved in photography. The study is based on a convenience sample and employs exploratory analyses; replication with independent samples and confirmatory methods is warranted. Implications are discussed for empirical aesthetics, photographic education, and curatorial mediation.
Breaking the fourth wall, when TV or film characters address the audience, has become common, yet its cognitive, affective, and perceptual effects remain unclear. Grounded in cognitive approaches to audiovisual narrative comprehension, this study investigates how direct address may shape viewers’ social-cognitive and narrative processing. We examined how fourth wall breaks influence viewers’ mental and emotional attributions, engagement, identification, affective valence, and enjoyment. Participants ( N = 50) watched scenes from movies and TV series that were experimentally manipulated to include or exclude a fourth wall break. After viewing, participants completed quantitative measures and provided open-ended scene descriptions. Scenes containing fourth wall breaks led to stronger identification with the target character and greater perceived narrative understanding. Open-ended responses also included more references to characters’ mental states when fourth wall breaks were present. The findings suggest that fourth wall breaks influence narrative comprehension and mental state attribution during film viewing, although further research is needed to clarify the mechanisms underlying these effects.
The current study proposes and validates the Precarious Work Scale (PreWorkS), a modular, theory-based instrument intended to encapsulate the multidimensional and idiosyncratic nature of precarious work within the cultural and creative industries (CCIs). PreWorkS was constructed through a systematic multi-step process, yielding 11 items across four dimensions: job instability, economic precarity, limited collective bargaining power, and lack of rights and protection. The scale was evaluated with a sample of 469 workers in CCIs, who were categorised into five professional categories. Confirmatory factor analysis corroborated the multidimensional structure, while the MIMIC-DIF analysis provided support for the scale's overall comparability across the five groups. Latent mean differences revealed significant structural inequalities within CCIs. Furthermore, the findings provide substantiated evidence for the construct validity of the instrument. Overall, PreWorkS emerges as a psychometrically robust instrument that is capable of capturing precarious working conditions in CCIs, whilst also highlighting the uneven distribution of precariousness.
With so many supposed experts on the internet, who can be trusted about perceptions of artistic merit? All professionals' album ratings on Wikipedia were tabulated every five years over 50 years, yielding a sample of 531 raters giving 16,614 ratings of 4,448 albums in 17 genres. For all critic pairs rating at least 30 albums, ratings were moderately in sync, with 72% of 230 pairs showing significant positive correlations (average r = +.35). In addition, shared aesthetic consensus regarding album quality explained more than twice the variance in ratings compared to individual critic idiosyncrasies. As predicted, the critics' rating distribution was mound-shaped but negatively skewed (-.62), while individuals varied widely in rating behavior. Inflated ratings were particularly salient (46.5% of ratings at 80/100 or higher). Consistent with Martindale, who argued that quality should decrease in older artistic areas, critics tended to perceive weakening average album quality between 1960 and 2010.
