Aesthetic evaluation of photographs through the stereotype of author᾿s mental disability

The present experiment examined the impact of knowledge about author᾿s mental disability, on the aesthetic evaluation of photographs. The participants evaluated pictures which authorship (artist disabled or not) was known or not known. In each group half of the pictures were intentionally distorted (blurred pictures), and half were not (sharp pictures). Eye-tracker was used to register the scanning pattern. The results demonstrated that subjects who were aware of the author᾿s disability, compared with those who were not, showed more consistency in the way of looking at the picture and they also assessed the value of the picture as higher. In addition the evaluation of photographs through the stereotype of the artist᾿s disability was to some extent dependent on whether the subjects viewed the picture that was sharp or blurred. peerReviewed publishedVersion