Vague, impressive language used in descriptions (bullshit) is thought to make art seem more profound and valuable to the viewer. We studied the effect during art exhibitions in real-life gallery-goers who saw paintings of four artists, each with either simplified, neutral, or bullshitty description. We crafted a typical description of each painting, which we later manipulated in terms of language. A simplified description was modified to be concrete and simplistic, while a bullshitty one was very abstract and vague. After analyzing over 1500 ratings, we found the expressive language of descriptions had a negligible effect on the perceived quality and monetary value of art ( R2 marginal ≤ 1%). We conclude that, at least for experienced gallery-goers, the description accompanying a painting has little influence, and the art speaks for itself.

中文翻译：

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废话（有时）让艺术（稍微）更具吸引力：对画廊参观者的实地研究

人们认为，描述中使用的含糊、令人印象深刻的语言（废话）可以让艺术对观众来说显得更加深刻和有价值。我们研究了现实生活中的画廊参观者在艺术展览期间看到四位艺术家的画作的效果，每个艺术家的画作要么是简化的，要么是中性的，要么是胡说八道的描述。我们对每幅画作了一个典型的描述，然后我们用语言进行了处理。简化的描述被修改为具体和简单化，而胡说八道的描述则变得非常抽象和模糊。在分析了 1500 多个评级后，我们发现描述的表达语言对艺术的感知质量和货币价值的影响可以忽略不计（R2边际≤1%）。我们的结论是，至少对于经验丰富的画廊参观者来说，一幅画的描述影响不大，艺术本身就说明了一切。