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Abstract

In everyday life, pleasing images are rarely isolated. Yet, ex-periments on aesthetic pleasure usually present only oneimage at a time. Here we ask whether people can reli-ably report the pleasure of an image even if another im-age is presented simultaneously. Participants (N=20) viewed36 OASIS-3-database images that uniformly span the entirerange of pleasure and beauty. On each trial, the observersaw two images simultaneously for 200 ms. The two imageswere presented to the left and right of the central fixationcross. A cue (randomly for left or right) indicated of whichimage the observer should report the pleasure (the target),while ignoring the other (the distractor). In half the blocks,a pre-cue came before the images. In the other half, a post-cue came after. We model the post-cued pleasure report asa weighted average of pre-cued target and distractor plea-sures. If observers can independently retain pleasure fromtwo images, ratings in pre- and post-cued blocks should bethe same. Consequently, in the modeled average, the targetweight should be nearly 1. Otherwise, if averaging is com-pulsory, target weight should be about 0.5. A majority of ourobservers (12/20) selectively reported pleasure from a post-cued target (weight > 0.85). Only two observers showedcompulsory averaging (weight < 0.60). The remaining re-ports fell in between. Thus, most people can independentlyretain pleasure from two stimuli for later report of either. So,averaging of pleasure is not compulsory.