Ambivalence of Artistic Photographs Stimulates Interest and the Motivation to Engage.

Ambivalence describes a conflict between contrasting valences, for example, when an image appears bitter but sweet. Such a potential for revealing ever-new facets of an object or situation might trigger interest that has been related to a combination of perceptual challenge with anticipation of coping or new experience. Interest might be even intensified when we heighten our awareness of the potential multiplicity of interpretations. We present two studies with artistic photographs examining the relationship between ambivalence and interest. The first study utilized explicit evaluations and revealed a positive relationship between estimated ambivalence and interest as well as an increase in interest after exploring positive and negative semantic facets of an image. The second study utilized a forced-choice paradigm that was captured by a high-speed eyetracker. It defined dwell time and choice-ratio as alternative measures of interest. When we asked participants which of two images they wanted to learn more about, they chose ambivalent photos more often and looked slightly longer at them. We discuss these findings and further examine the potential role of artistic context for interest in ambivalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]