Adolescents' cross-cultural aesthetic preferences are shaped by cultural background, art exposure, and developmental psychological traits

BackgroundAdolescence is a critical developmental period for cultural learning and the formation of aesthetic preferences. As adolescents increasingly encounter visual art from diverse cultural traditions through educational and digital contexts, understanding how cultural background, experiential factors, and individual psychological traits jointly shape cross-cultural aesthetic preferences is essential. However, research in cross-cultural aesthetics has largely focused on adults, leaving adolescent development relatively underexplored.MethodsThis study examined visual art preferences among 400 adolescents aged 14, 18 from Chinese and Western cultural backgrounds. Participants evaluated artworks from Chinese and Western traditions and completed measures assessing exposure to global art forms, openness to experience, and cognitive flexibility. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test the mediating role of art exposure and the moderating effects of psychological traits on the relationship between cultural background and aesthetic preferences.ResultsCultural background significantly predicted adolescents' aesthetic preferences, with a general tendency to prefer artworks from one's own cultural tradition. Exposure to global art forms partially mediated this relationship, such that greater cross-cultural art engagement was associated with weaker culturally congruent preferences. In addition, openness to experience and cognitive flexibility moderated cultural effects: adolescents higher in these traits showed reduced cultural bias in their aesthetic judgments. Models integrating cultural, experiential, and psychological factors explained substantially more variance in aesthetic preferences than models based on cultural background alone.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that adolescents' cross-cultural aesthetic preferences are shaped by the interaction of cultural background, learning-related art exposure, and individual developmental characteristics. Aesthetic preferences during adolescence are not fixed outcomes of cultural membership but remain responsive to experience and psychological differences. This study advances a developmentally informed understanding of cross-cultural aesthetic learning in adolescence.