Abstract
Subjective appearance and aesthetic appreciation are inherently multidimensional, arising from the combined influence of a variety of visual features such as color, shape, and size. Yet, how multiple feature dimensions jointly shape perceptual and aesthetic evaluations remains poorly understood. Most previous studies either employ multidimensional stimuli without precise parametric control or use parametrically controlled stimuli that vary along only one dimension, limiting our understanding of the multidimensional structure underlying subjective evaluations. To address this challenge, we combined two methodological advances: the Order & Complexity Toolbox for Aesthetics (Van Geert et al., 2023), which enables the generation of parametrically controlled multidimensional stimuli, and Gibbs Sampling with People (Harrison et al., 2020), which efficiently characterizes subjective evaluations in high-dimensional stimulus spaces. Our stimuli consisted of visual displays containing multiple elements that varied in color, shape, and size and were arranged according to different organizational structures. Across nine experiments involving more than 1,000 participants and over 125,000 evaluations, we estimated multidimensional probability distributions underlying perceptual evaluations of order and complexity and aesthetic evaluations of pleasure and interest. Three main findings emerged. First, evaluations depended on both absolute feature values and relative differences between elements for each feature dimension, indicating that observers are sensitive not only to the characteristics of individual elements but also to the relations among them. Second, the influence of these relative differences depended on the overall perceptual organization of the display. Preferences for simplicity — operationalized as small differences in feature values between elements — varied systematically across evaluation criteria and with the degree of perceptual unity within the display. Third, despite these contextual effects, different visual features (color, shape, and size) conributed largely independently to the evaluations, suggesting that their influences on subjective evaluations are relatively separable. Together, these findings provide a multidimensional account of how visual features and their relations jointly shape perceptual and aesthetic evaluations.