By Dr Stian Reimers

If you like a party, you may prefer abstract paintings. The results of our online experiment into art preference and personality type suggest that extraverts prefer works by artists who don't attempt to paint reality.

Art preference and personality type. We designed the experiment to look at whether people with different personality types like different forms of art. In previous studies researchers have found that:

· People who prefer abstract art tend to be more conservative, dogmatic, and are often sensation seekers.

· People who are open to new experiences are less likely to enjoy looking at realistic paintings. They seek something more atypical and challenging.

· People with low emotional stability tend to prefer abstract and pop-art paintings.

· People who score high in agreeableness like paintings and tend to dislike forms like pop-art.

· People who like representational paintings may also be more conscientious than average.

It's less clear how extraversion ties in with painting preference. Some researchers have found that extraverts like modern art more than introverts, but others have found exactly the opposite pattern.

The experiment. We chose six distinct painting styles for the experiment: Impressionism, Abstract, Japanese art, Islamic art, Northern Renaissance, Cubism.

In the first part of the experiment, test-takers were asked to rate the paintings and the artists. They were also asked to write words that described how the paintings made them feel. In the second part they were asked to take a personality test, which incorporates a set of personality traits– the Five Factor model. It measures the following: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, intellectualism.

This is one of the most popular forms of personality profile, partly because the different factors are largely independent of each other. In addition to the five-factor model traits, we also used a short set of questions measuring emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is more controversial than the other traits, but some researchers believe that people with higher emotional intelligence have a greater insight into people's feelings and drives, including their own. In short, people with high emotional intelligence are the sorts of people we might expect to engage with the subtle complexities of art.

Our results. The main findings of this experiment were that extraverts preferred Abstract and Cubist art relative to more representational forms like Impressionism and Japanese art. There are theories of extraversion that suggest introverts crave less external stimulation than extraverts, and these results back up theories of this type. It's likely that, for many people, more modern paintings tend to have a higher visual impact than traditional forms or art, which are more widely accepted as the norm. Of course, the impact a piece of art has on an individual can never be predicted.

The opposite was true for agreeableness. People who were more agreeable tended to prefer Impressionism and Japanese art, whereas people who were less agreeable liked what you might call more challenging art – Abstract, Cubism, Islamic and Renaissance. Intellectuals – those open to new aesthetic experiences – tended to avoid Impressionism, possibly because it was too familiar.

What did people think of the art?Impressionism was easily the most popular form of art in the experiment. It was followed closely by Japanese art, with Cubism and Abstract trailing further down the list. Only 10 per cent of people who completed the experiment preferred Renaissance or Islamic art.

Some of people's preferences must be down to the ease with which one can make sense of an image. But there must also be an effect of the familiarity people have with a particular school of art. The more modern styles are seen everywhere, and Japanese art is also extremely popular. Islamic and Renaissance art are less familiar, which might explain why they were less highly rated. These are preliminary results, but with the tens of thousands of people having taken part in the experiment, it's likely that the results will make a significant contribution to research in this area.

Effects of art education.A different pattern emerges when we look at effect of art education on preference. We asked participants how much education they had experienced, from none at all through watching TV documentaries and going to galleries to taking a degree in some form of art. People's opinions about art were strongly influenced by the amount of art education they'd been through. Those with the least education rated Impressionism as the most pleasing genre of art. For people with the most art education, Impressionism was still highly rated, but Cubism and Japanese art came out higher.

At the other end of the pleasure scale, people with the least art education reacted strongly against the geometric shapes of abstract art, rating it as their least favourite type. In some ways this is understandable - although there is a strong aesthetic in abstract images, it is harder to make sense of than representational art, which shows recognizable people and things. In this way, abstract art is easy to dismiss as being 'unartistic'.

People with the highest level of art education were least taken by Islamic art. There may be many reasons for this. One possibility is that, - in the UK at least - education tends to focus more on western art, so people may find Islamic art harder to get any meaning out of. It doesn't, however, explain why Japanese art is so popular among the highly educated.

So overall, it seems that your level of art education has greatest effect on your relative preference for different art forms. (from BBC Science & Nature. July 14, 2009)