On the relation between perceived stability and aesthetic appreciation.

Perceived stability is an important feature of pictures with respect to their aesthetic appreciation. Pictures whose composition is perceived as stable are usually liked more than those with unstable arrangements. However, there are exceptions.

Perceptual Balance, Stability, and Aesthetic Appreciation: Their Relations Depend on the Picture Type.

It is widely assumed that the aesthetic appreciation of a picture depends, among others, on how well the picture's composition is perceptually balanced, where "perceptual balance" is often defined analogous to mechanics. To what extent this metaphor holds for different picture types, however, is still open. Therefore, in this study, we examined the relationship between balance, liking, and some objective measures with pictures from an aesthetic sensitivity test.

Comparison of Objective Measures for Predicting Perceptual Balance and Visual Aesthetic Preference.

The aesthetic appreciation of a picture largely depends on the perceptual balance of its elements. The underlying mental mechanisms of this relation, however, are still poorly understood. For investigating these mechanisms, objective measures of balance have been constructed, such as the Assessment of Preference for Balance (APB) score of Wilson and Chatterjee (2005).