Spatial frequencies in aesthetic website evaluations – explaining how ultra-rapid evaluations are formed

Abstract

This study investigates how aesthetic website evaluations, especially those formed after very brief presentations, depend on visual information that is encoded in low- or high-spatial frequencies. A total of 92 participants took part in the experiment. The study used a 3 × 3 mixed design in which presentation time (50, 500 and 10000 ms) and spatial filtering (low-pass filtered, high-pass filtered and unfiltered stimuli) were manipulated. First, we replicate prior results from online studies of high- and low-spatial frequencies. Second, we confirm a prediction from neurocognitive models that only low-spatial frequencies are relevant to aesthetic judgements in ultra-rapid presentation modes. Third, we demonstrate that stimulus repetitions lead to an overestimation of the importance of ultra-rapid stimulus presentations. Taken together, our results highlight the utility of neurocognitive models of visual processing to explain the rapid aesthetic evaluation of websites.

Practitioner Summary: Using neurocognitive models we present an approach to explain how aesthetic impressions are formed. We show that ultra-rapid judgements are connected with low- but not with high-spatial frequencies, which are neurologically processed in different visual pathways. Furthermore we identify possible methodological problems in previous studies of ultra-rapid website perception.

Keywords:

• aesthetics
• first impression
• spatial frequency
• repetition priming
• website evaluation
• website perception

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Maren Hulisz for constructive suggestions and for her help testing participants as well as two anonymous reviewers for their very valuable comments to prior versions of this article.