Aesthetic appeal is no coincidence: Preference for generic over specific viewpoints

Abstract

Generic viewpoints produce images where the visible elements, and their spatial relationships, are largely preserved with small alterations in viewpoint. In contrast, specific viewpoints result from the observer being in a special position relative to the scene, causing spatial alignments between elements that are readily broken with a change in viewpoint. It has been proposed that generic viewpoints are aesthetically more pleasing, due to their lack of suspicious spatial coincidences. We investigated this idea for cartoon foreground and background objects, and found images where foreground and background objects were not suspiciously aligned were judged to be more appealing. A similar, albe..