The impact of action observation and motor imagery on the aesthetic preference of Chinese calligraphy

The creation of artwork requires motor activity. However, few empirical studies have directly explored the relationship between the experience of an artist's action and aesthetic experience. This study aimed to examine the effect of observing and imagery of the artist's action on the participants' aesthetic preferences. In Experiment 1 and 2, we took hard-pen and brush-pen Chinese calligraphy images as the stimulus, respectively, to explore the influence of action observation on the aesthetic preference by manipulating the artists' actions. The results of both Experiment 1 and 2 show that when participants observed the artists' actions, they tended to report a higher preference for calligraphy images compared with the control condition. In Experiments 3 and 4, we used instructions to manipulate the motor imagery tasks and investigated the effect of imaging the artist's action on the participants' aesthetic preferences. The results showed that both kinesthetic imagery and visual imagery increased the participants' preference. In general, our study shows that both action observation and motor imagery contribute to participants' aesthetic preferences. The results are discussed in terms of how artists' actions possibly influence the aesthetic preference of Chinese calligraphy.