Visual art inspired by climate change—An analysis of audience reactions to 37 artworks presented during 21st UN climate summit in Paris

Markey, Lauring, and Leder [13] visualized the mechanism of art perception and its effect by summarizing models that have been suggested in the field of empirical aesthetics in the last 20 years. These influential models [14–20] describe the psychology of perceiving art as a process involving input, processing, and output stages. We considered especially the input and the out- put stage as relevant for the present study. In the following sections, we will explain why we focus on these two stages and outline which input and output variables we considered relevant for the environmental art perception model we suggest. The model also incorporates findings from environmental psychology on what factors are essential to motivate people to change. Input variables relevant in the climate change art experience. The input stage is a stage in which different aspects, such as features of the artwork as well as features of the viewer and the surrounding, flow into the mechanism of art perception. The input variables included in this study will be described in detail below. Characteristics of the viewer. Socio-cultural factors are important characteristics of the spec- tator and relevant input factors in the process of art perception and environmental studies. For one, the more art experience a person has, the stronger the emotional reactions, as well as understanding and appreciation of an artwork [21]. People with more art experience were also found to be more flexible in their art perception, while for people with less experience, the con-

nection between their understanding and appreciation of the artwork was much more corre- lated [22]. This means that novices appreciate art much more if they understand it, which is also supported by Leder, Gerger, Brieber, and Schwarz [23], who found that experience with art reduced negative emotional responses to provocative or negative art. In the environmental domain, younger people, women, and people with a higher level of education have been reported to be more environmentally concerned than older people, men, or people that are less educated [24–27]. This leads us to assume that characteristics of the viewer, such as art expertise, age, education, and gender, would affect the processing and out- put of art perception, and we controlled for these aspects in our analyses. Environmental attitude is a tenacious psychological factor, which we assumed not likely to change through one encounter with environmental art [28, 29] but to possibly influence the perception of environmental art. It is one of the main variables of the theory of planned behav- ior affecting behavior mediated through intentions [30] and was identified as one of the most powerful predictors of environmental intention and subsequent behavior [31]. Artwork related features. It is likely that the reaction to climate change-related art not only depends on the characteristics of the observer but also of the artwork. Therefore, we docu- mented basic features of the artwork such as the form of visual art (e.g., photography, painting,

sculpture, etc.), its size, and materials used in its creation, as well as indicators for neuropsy- chological principles, which were found to be responsible for why watching art is considered a stimulating and pleasant experience by most people [32], and thus might also be decisive for the effect the artwork might achieve: 1. The peak shift principle, which is an exaggeration of key defining features of a form or object. An object which is defined by being long might be displayed as even longer in an art- work, or an object that is colored in a warm yellow tone against a dark background will be colored even more intensively against an even more dark background. 2. Perceptual grouping and binding are Gestalt principles [33] and describe the effect that simi- lar items (similar shape, color, movement, etc.) are automatically grouped to larger objects. 3. Isolation of single visual cues, which refers to the effect that artworks often reduce the num- ber of visual stimuli to a small selection, which then activates the respective neuronal clus- ters more intensively. PLOS ONE Visual art inspired by climate change — An analysis of audience reactions PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247331 February 19, 2021 3 / 18