Do Prestige and Animacy Matter to Art Experts? Exploring Social Learning, Signaling, Perceptual, and Cognitive Explanations

Art experts generally perceive, process, and appreciate artworks differently from non-experts. Here we explored whether animacy of the content and prestige of the context of artworks matter to experts. Results (n > 1,000) suggest that experts are indeed swayed by prestige cues when appreciating artworks. Furthermore, the higher their expertise, the less animacy matters, to the point even of a reversal among the highest echelons. There experts prefer inanimate (e.g., furniture) to animate stimuli. We consider several, mostly complementary explanations. One interpretation is that experts might have learned through prestige bias to reduce their preference for animacy, which would be consistent with a prestige bias runaway process. Other interpretations include processing perceptual (dis)fluency, cognitive mastering, and identity signaling. Irrespective of the precise roles of these compatible processes, the results might point to a more general expertise-dependent pattern. We close by discussing further research opportunities to further fine-tune possible explanations.