Do Massed Presentations Make People Like Paintings More Than Spaced Presentations?

Abstract

This study investigated how spacing and massing affected the extent to which the photographs of paintings are favoured. In this study, 50 individuals participated in one of two conditions. We used a survey to conduct this experiment. In the survey, images of paintings were displayed in groups of six on a web page. One massed set presented paintings by one artist. The other spaced set presented six images of paintings, each by a different artist, shown one directly after another. All sets of six images were featured on a single survey page. Based on many past studies, familiarity boosts preferences toward a certain object, in our case, paintings. When many paintings by the same artist are grouped together, familiarity encourages higher favourability ratings. The spacing effect, which delays exposure to consecutive objects, helps participants remember the paintings more, encouraging higher favourability scores at the last phase, when thumbprint galleries are shown, than at the initial rating. The study gathered inconclusive evidence about the impact of spacing.