Comments on: Split Second Stats #3: Gender and Information

By: Brooklyn Museum: Community: bloggers@brooklynmuseum » In the Gallery vs. Online: How a Split Second Can Differ

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:50:04 +0000

[…] Women rank things slightly higher than men. […]

By: Michelle Pennington

Michelle Pennington — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 18:56:19 +0000

Yes, I agree it is quite complex and would take years to be done in any thorough kind of way. Even a study that doesn’t hope to be comprehensive would be interesting I think. If you isolated a set of variables (three interpretive approaches for each work of art randomly assigned per respondent let’s say) and test for preference in the way that Split Second does, I would think you could analyze the results in a way that could be meaningful even if it just scratches the surface (and skirts the meaning making issue for now).

By: Beau Sievers

Beau Sievers — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 10:39:35 +0000

Michelle, that’s right, but it’s actually even trickier! The interpretive slant of the text may be important, but I think what that points toward is an interaction between the content of the image and the content of the text. That is, thoughts about the text and about the image will inform one another. Not only is this a question about meaning, but it’s a question about implicit meaning derived from a relationship between two things—this would be very difficult to study quantitatively, so we’ve dodged the issue for now. But I agree; a thorough investigation of this issue would be fascinating.

By: Michelle Pennington

Michelle Pennington — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 02:25:27 +0000

I find this study and your analysis of it fascinating. An additional aspect to factor into another experiment is the interpretive slant to the text accompanying the image. While this is certainly related to the content of the work of art, the writer’s choice of information to privilege in the text can impact the viewer’s perception as well.