The Effects of Titles on the Aesthetic Evaluation of Japanese Poetry

The present study tested the effect of title type on the aesthetic evaluation of Japanese poetry. Ninety participants read a Japanese poem presented with either a “descriptive” title, an “elaborative” title, or no title. Participants then gave ratings according to their aesthetic experiences on the poem. The results revealed that the title type significantly influenced the readers’ aesthetic evaluations. Specifically, descriptive titles promoted more thought about the poem compared to elaborative titles. This finding can be attributed to the enhanced processing fluency afforded by descriptive titles, which allows readers to more readily understand and grasp the key characteristics of the poem, thereby facilitating thought evocation. These results extend previous findings on the influence of titles on the aesthetic appreciation of paintings and music to the domain of poetry. Furthermore, they highlight the role of processing fluency in possibly mediating the relationship between title type and aesthetic evaluation.