The Influences Of Contextual Information On Artistic Creativity Evaluation And Subjective Understanding

Creativity evaluation is an important topic in creativity research.In our daily life,public evaluation of artworks has become as influential as expert evaluation on artistic creation.Research in the field of creativity evaluation also shows that the quality of public evaluation can also be comparable to that of experts(Kaufman et al.,2009).However,compared with expert reviews,public reviews seem to be more susceptible to contextual information unrelated to the work itself(such as personal information of the creator,explanation and introduction of the work by the creator or others).Contextual information may deepen the public’s understanding of the work,or it may bias the public’s evaluation of the work.In this regard,some people believe that the knowledge of additional information will lead to the fallacy of evaluation(Proudfoot et al.,2015;Runco,1997);however,some people believe that contextual information can help evaluators make more objective and accurate evaluations(Han et al.,2017).There is still a lack of adequate research in the field of creativity on the impact of contextual information on the public’s understanding of artistic works and evaluation of artistic creativity and how to curb its negative impact.Using university students as participants and abstract paintings as materials,this study mainly examines two questions :(1)which types of contextual information have a significant impact on the public’s subjective understanding and evaluation of artistic creativity(experiments 1& 2)?(2)How to suppress the negative effects(Experiments 3 & 4)?Experiment 1 examines which types of contextual information affect the public’s subjective understanding and evaluation of artistic creativity.The experiment used 2(before & after the presentation of contextual information)× 4(type of contextual information:(1)the interpretation of the content of the artwork;(2)the creator is 8years old;(3)high famousness of the creator;(4)the creator has died)two-factor within-subject design.The dependent variables are the public’s subjective understanding score and artistic creativity evaluation.The results showed that information of artwork(the interpretation of the content of the artwork)improved participants’ subjective understanding and artistic creativity score.The "the creator has died" information had no significant effect on subjective understanding,but improved the score of artistic creativity;the high famousness of the creator will reduce the subjective understanding,but has no significant effect on the evaluation of artistic creativity.The 8-year-old creator had no significant effect on subjective understanding and artistic creativity evaluation.Experiment 2 further explored the effect of authenticity of information of artworks(the interpretation of the content of the artwork)on public’s subjective understanding and artistic creativity evaluation.In the experiment,authentic or false information of artwork(the interpretation of the content of the artwork)were presented to the participants respectively,and whether there was a significant difference in the scores of the two groups of participants on abstract paintings was observed.The results showed that there was no significant difference between the two groups in the scores of artistic creativity and subjective understanding,and artistic creativity evaluation was significantly higher than those in experiment 1 without the information of the artwork.This indicates that participants lack discernment for the authenticity of the interpretation of the content of the artwork.As long as there is the interpretation of the content of the artwork,participants will raise artistic creativity evaluation.Experiments 3 and 4 were designed to respectively investigate two methods of suppressing evaluation bias: the voluntary suppression of contextual information generated by the instruction("to evaluate only on the basis of the artworks")and passive suppression of contextual information induced by a specific task requirement(probability estimation).Both experiments used the evaluation bias generated by the "the creator has died" information as the suppression object.In Experiment 3 investigated whether the participants could voluntarily suppress the influence of "the creator has died" information on the evaluation.The participants were divided into control group and experimental group.Both groups were presented the "the creator has died" information,but the control group was asked to evaluate with the "the creator has died" information,while the experimental group evaluated only on the basis of the artworks.The results showed that there were significant differences between the two groups in the subjective understanding score,and asking the subjects to evaluate only on the basis of the artworks reduced the score to a certain extent.In the evaluation of artistic creativity,there was no significant difference between the two groups,but both of them were significantly higher than the scores of the group in experiment 1 that did not show "the creator has died" information.This indicates that it is difficult for the experimental group to voluntarily suppress the interference of the above contextual information on artistic creativity evaluation according to the requirements of the instruction.In Experiment 4,participants were asked to give the probability of the abstract painting being selected into a provincial art exhibition hall,in order to see if the task helps suppress the distraction of contextual information(as opposed to Experiment 3,this task was called "passive suppression").Both control and experimental participants were asked to estimate the probability of a painting being selected for a provincial art exhibition hall(5%,10%...95% total 10 points for the participants to choose),the difference was only that the control group participants did not know "the creator has died" information,directly estimated the probability;while the experimental group knew this information.The results show that there is no significant difference in the estimated probabilities between the two groups.This suggests that task requirements such as " to estimate the probability of a painting being selected for a provincial art exhibition hall" may be effective in helping evaluators avoid the negative influence of contextual information.The above experiments show that :(1)the information of artwork--the interpretation of the content of the artwork can improve the public’s understanding of abstract painting,while "the creator has died" information do not promote the understanding,but both of these information have a great impact on raising the public’s artistic creativity evaluation.(2)The public as evaluators lack discerning ability to the information of artwork--the interpretation of the content of the artwork.If evaluators are presented with the information of artwork--the interpretation of the content of the artwork,they will give a higher artistic creativity score.(3)It is difficult for the public to voluntarily suppress the interference of contextual information if they are only required to rate only on the basis of the artworks(without considering contextual information);With the help of task-specific requirements(estimating the probability of a painting being selected for a provincial exhibition hall),the public were able to suppress this interference in a passive way.To some extent,this study helps to answer which contextual information is likely to have an impact on the public’s subjective understanding and evaluation of artistic creativity,and preliminarily explores the intervention methods to curb its negative impact.The findings also contribute to the popularization of art and effectively design relevant display information in art education.