Department of Psychology, Pace University, New York City, New York, USA.
Department of Human Resources, Organization and Labor Economics, Solvay Business School, Brussels, Belgium.
Br J Psychol. 2020 Nov;111(4):659-662. doi: 10.1111/bjop.12440. Epub 2020 Jan 30.
Corradi et al. (British Journal of Psychology, 2019) argue that their new conception of visual aesthetic sensitivity (as responsiveness to aesthetic features in one's preferences) presents several advantages in comparison with the current ability view of aesthetic sensitivity, usually defined as the ability to judge aesthetic stimuli in accordance with standards (The Journal of Psychology, 1964, 57 and 49). Although the measure they propose is interesting and presents advances to the field, we point to important issues. Notably, the authors conveniently base their comparison between the two conceptions on psychometric double standards, discard a century of research on aesthetic sensitivity by focusing on Eysenck's speculations, and disguise an extension of already existing aesthetic preference tests (e.g., The Journal of Psychology, 1952, 33 and 199; Empirical Studies of the Arts, 2005, 23 and 165) as a redefinition of aesthetic sensitivity. We conclude that both aesthetic preference and aesthetic sensitivity research are legitimate objects of study, that the authors present interesting ideas to further the study of aesthetic preferences, but that their approach is not new and that its proposed renaming only adds confusion to the field.
科拉迪等人（《英国心理学杂志》，2019 年）认为，他们对视觉审美敏感性的新构想（即对个人偏好中的审美特征的反应能力）与当前的审美敏感性能力观相比具有几个优势，通常将审美敏感性能力定义为根据标准判断审美刺激的能力（《心理学杂志》，1964 年，57 卷和 49 卷）。尽管他们提出的测量方法很有趣，并且对该领域有一定的推进作用，但我们也指出了一些重要的问题。值得注意的是，作者方便地将这两种构想之间的比较建立在心理测量双重标准的基础上，忽视了一个世纪以来对审美敏感性的研究，而只关注艾森克的推测，并且将现有的审美偏好测试的扩展（例如，《心理学杂志》，1952 年，33 卷和 199 卷；《艺术的实证研究》，2005 年，23 卷和 165 卷）伪装成对审美敏感性的重新定义。我们的结论是，审美偏好和审美敏感性研究都是合法的研究对象，作者提出了一些有趣的想法来进一步研究审美偏好，但他们的方法并不是新的，而且他们提出的重新命名只会给该领域增加混乱。
