ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Perception Science
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1578785
SURFACE NEATNESS AS AN INDEX OF AESTHETIC VALUE OF EVERYDAY OBJECTS
Provisionally accepted
- 1National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
- 2University of Macau, Taipa, Macau Region, China
- 3Aarhus University, Aarhus, Central Denmark Region, Denmark
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Surface neatness is a crucial factor in the aesthetic evaluation of everyday objects. Despite its importance, previous research has mostly focused on isolated surface features such as gloss, shine, dirt or scratches, without considering surface neatness holistically. This study addresses this gap by systematically investigating how variations in surface neatness influence aesthetic judgments. We presented a set of everyday objects from five categories (household items, tools, personal use items, stationery, and kitchen utensils) in three surface conditions: untidy (with mechanical and hygienic defects), neutral (with no visible defects), and neat (with gloss and cleanliness). The dependent variable was participants’ preference rating, indicating how much they liked or disliked the appearance of the viewed objects. The results show that surface neatness significantly affects aesthetic ratings: objects with untidy surfaces were consistently rated lower in attractiveness, while neat surfaces received the highest ratings. These findings highlight the importance of surface conditions in the perception of object value, emphasizing the necessity to consider surface neatness as a dynamic factor in real-world interactions. Apart from motivating more rigorous approaches to operationalizing surface properties in cognitive research on human-object interactions, the present results offer valuable insights for fields such as product design, consumer behavior, and sustainable practices by demonstrating how changes in surface states influence aesthetic experience and object desirability.
Keywords: surface perception, Visual attractiveness, aesthetics, Human-object interaction, Neatness
Received: 01 Apr 2025; Accepted: 10 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ledneva, Myachykov and Shtyrov. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Tatiana Ledneva, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
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