Personality and preference for surreal paintings

Abstract Sixty-two subjects rated 20 slides of surreal and representational paintings. They then completed questionnaires assessing tolerance of ambiguity, sensation seeking, and the ‘Big Five’ personality dimensions. Ambiguity tolerance was not found to be as strongly associated with preference for surreal art as had been predicted. The hypothesis that sensation seeking scores would be related positively to preference for surreal art and negatively related to preference for representation art was confirmed. Experience Seeking and Boredom Susceptibility were shown to be most significant subscale predictors of variance in preference. The associations found between the Big Five personality dimensions and preference for surreal art were not strong, suggesting that narrower measures of personality may be better predictors of preference for specific types of art. The findings support previous research demonstrating a link between personality and art preference, and indicate that certain traits may be particularly relevant to preferences for surreal art.

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