Art preference and personality type
We designed the experiment to look at whether people with different personality types like different forms of art. In previous studies researchers have found that:
People who prefer abstract art tend to be more conservative, dogmatic, and are often sensation seekers.
People who are open to new experiences are less likely to enjoy looking at realistic paintings. They seek something more atypical and challenging.
People with low emotional stability tend to prefer abstract and pop-art paintings.
People who score high in agreeableness like paintings and tend to dislike forms like pop-art.
People who like representational paintings may also be more conscientious than average.
It's less clear how extraversion ties in with painting preference. Some researchers have found that extraverts like modern art more than introverts, but others have found exactly the opposite pattern.
Our results
The main findings of this experiment were that extraverts preferred abstract and cubist art relative to more representational forms like Impressionism and Japanese art. There are theories of extraversion that suggest introverts crave less external stimulation than extraverts, and these results back up theories of this type. It's likely that, for many people, more modern paintings tend to have a higher visual impact than traditional forms or art, which are more widely accepted as the norm. Of course, the impact a piece of art has on an individual can never be predicted.
The opposite was true for agreeableness. People who were more agreeable tended to prefer Impressionism and Japanese art, whereas people who were less agreeable liked what you might call more challenging art – Abstract, Cubism, Islamic and Renaissance. Intellectuals – those open to new aesthetic experiences – tended to avoid Impressionism, possibly because it was too familiar.