Aesthetic judgment of apparent motion: effects of movement smoothness, synchrony, and shape

Recently, Psychology of Aesthetics is starting to address the gap in knowledge on synchronous movement observation. This article presents two experiments that assess aesthetic judgments of animations. In Experiment 1, participants watched 32 video clips of human body animations depicting smooth synchrony, smooth asynchrony, abrupt synchrony, and abrupt asynchrony. Participants rated the videos using semantic differential scales of liking, arousal, variety, control, diversity, familiarity, obviousness, and happiness. In Experiment 2, participants watched 32 video clips of human and abstract animations depicting postural fluency, abstract fluency, postural disfluency, and abstract disfluency. Participants rated the videos using the same semantic differential scales of Experiment 1. In Experiment 1, our analysis revealed that synchrony enhanced the preference ratings for abrupt movements, while asynchrony diminished the preference ratings for smooth movements. In Experiment 2, participants’ responses showed that human body animations tend to be more calming when fluent and more exciting when disfluent, in comparison to abstract animations. In both experiments, participants liked movement smoothness and synchrony, and disliked abruptness and asynchrony. Findings from the two experiments highlight the aesthetic appeal of synchronous movement and the aesthetic strength of the human body in motion.