Perception of sports photographs: a multidimensional scaling analysis

Some sports photographs are remarkable for how animate they appear, whereas others seem particularly static or frozen. To explore the aspects of still photographs that might produce a sense of action, 34 observers viewed all possible pairs of 14 previously published images depicting sports figures in action and were asked to judge their similarity under two conditions, image-focus (how similar are the images) or movement-focus (how similar is the type of movement). A separate group of observers also rated each image on eight scales. Multidimensional scaling analyses suggested that in the image-focus condition, subjects tended to organize their judgments around three general dimensions, e.g., on-ground versus off-ground, while in the movement-focus condition the subjects were more likely to cluster the images along the lines of the particular activity, throwing, running, or jumping. We discuss the problem of movement depiction in sports photographs and make suggestions for research on the effects of facial expressions, muscular strain, and amount of limb extension.