BRIEF REPORT When the going gets tough the beautiful get going: aesthetic appeal facilitates task performance

# The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract The current studies examined the effect of aesthetic appeal on performance. According to one hypothesis, appeal would lead to overall decrements or enhancements in perfor-mance [e.g. Sonderegger & Sauer, (Applied Ergonomics, 41, 403–410, 2010)]. Alternatively, appeal might influence perfor-mance only in problem situations, such as when the task is difficult [e.g. Norman, (2004)]. The predictions of these hy-potheses were examined in the context of an icon search-and-localisation task. Icons were used because they are well-defined stimuli and pervasive to modern everyday life. When search was made difficult using visually complex stimuli (Experiment 1), or abstract and unfamiliar stimuli (Experiment 2), icons that were appealing were found more quickly than their unappeal-ing counterparts. These findings show that in a low-level visual processing task, with demand characteristics related to appeal eliminated, appeal can influence performance, especially under duress