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answers resulting from answering randomly to the test is 48.3 %, due to the fact that
some of the items were made up of three images.
Graves (
1948
) reported that art students achieved higher scores in the test than
non-art students. He stated that: “the test's ability to differentiate the art groups from
the non-art groups is unmistakably clear”. Eysenck and Castle (
1971
) obtained dif-
ferent results showing fewer differences between art and non-art students (64.4 %
vs. 60 %) with variances below 4 % in all cases, and also different responses in
males and females. Eysenck and Castle (
1971
) pointed out the “general climate of
art teaching, which now tends to stress simplicity and regularity to a greater extent
than 25 years ago” as a possible reason for the differences observed. The DJT test
was used as an instrument by the career advisors of the Portuguese Institute for Em-
ployment and Vocational Training. According to the results found by this institute
while validating the test for the Portuguese population, published in internal reports
and provided to the career advisors, the results achieved in the DJT with randomly
selected individuals yield an average percentage of 50.76 % correct answers. This
score is similar to the one obtained by answering randomly to the test, which in-
dicates its difficulty. If we consider students in the last years of Fine Arts degrees,
the average increases up to 61.87 %. Nevertheless, Götz and Götz (
1974
) report
that “22 different arts experts (designers, painters, sculptors) had 0.92 agreement on
choice of preferred design, albeit being critical of them” (Chamorro-Premuzic and
Furnham
2004
).
Like in most psychological tests, one should exercise great care when interpreting
the results. The fact that a subject obtains a higher score in the DJT than another does
not imply that he has better aesthetic judgement skills. It can mean, for instance, that
one of the subjects is making choices based on aesthetics while the other is not. For
example, a structural engineer may be inclined to choose well-balanced and stable
designs, systematically valuing these properties above all else and ignoring rhythm,
contrast, dynamism, etc. because the balance of the structure is the key factor to him.
The test has been used for career guidance based on the reasoning that a subject that
consistently makes choices according to aesthetic criteria is likely to have a vocation
for an art-related career.
The DJT is based on aesthetic principles which may not be universally accepted
or applicable (Eysenck
1969
, Eysenck and Castle
1971
, Uduehi
1995
). Additionally,
even if the aesthetic principles are accepted, the ability of the test to assess them has
been questioned (Eysenck and Castle
1971
). The average results obtained by hu-
mans in these tests also vary between studies (Eysenck and Castle
1971
, Uduehi
1995
). Although this can be, at least partially, explained by the selection of partici-
pants and other exogenous factors, it makes it harder to understand what constitutes
a good score in this test.
The ability of these tests to measure the aesthetic judgement skills of the subjects
is not undisputed, nor are the aesthetic principles they indirectly subscribe. Never-
theless, they can still be valuable validation tests in the sense that they can be used to
measure the ability of an AJS to capture the aesthetic proprieties explored in these
tests and the degree of accordance with the aesthetic judgements they implicitly
defend.
