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Database: PsycARTICLES

[Journal Article]

Conservatism and art preferences.

Wilson, Glenn D.; Ausman, James; Mathews, Thomas R.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 25(2), Feb 1973, 286-288.

Hypothesized, on the basis of the proposition that a generalized fear of uncertainty is the psychological variable which accounts for the organization of social attitudes along a general factor of liberalism-conservatism, that conservatives would express an aversion to highly complex and abstract art works. 20 paintings were chosen by an art expert, 5 to represent each of 4 categories differing in degree of uncertainty: simple representational, simple abstract, complex representational, and complex abstract. 16 female and 14 male 23-34 yr. olds made preference judgments for each painting and completed the Conservatism Scale. As predicted, high scorers on the Conservatism Scale preferred paintings in the simple representational category and showed a definite dislike for the complex representational and complex abstract works, while liberals preferred the more complex and abstract paintings. The complexity dimension was the primary discriminator of the judgments of liberals and conservatives (r = -.56, p < .01) rather than abstraction (r = -.14). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

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