Visual Attention Bias for Self-Made Artworks

We investigated visual attentional biases toward self-made artworks. Self-made objects tend to be favored, remembered, valued, and ranked above and beyond objects that are not related to the self. On this basis, we set out to test whether the effects of self-relevance would apply to visual art, and via what mechanisms. In three studies, participants created abstract paintings that were then incorporated in a dot-probe task, pairing self-made and other-made stimuli. Our findings confirm that attention and preference are higher for self-made (vs. other-made) artworks. Furthermore, we show that visual attention assessed by a dot-probe task constitutes a reliable measure of preference for art.