Quantifying Structural Aesthetic Features and Personality Trait Preferences in Kai Shu Calligraphy

摘要

Chinese calligraphy offers fruitful visual structure not found in abstract/ figurative paintings or photographic images. It makes it well-suited for studying how personality shapes aesthetic preference, yet few works have explored this link. This paper introduces the first computational framework that models the link between viewer personality and Kai Shu calligraphic preference. It collects a dataset of Kai Shu calligraphy images, user preference scores, and Big Five personality traits. It extracts 160 structural feature descriptors from eight categories, such as stroke curvature, layout, and whitespace. Regression and attribution methods reveal five patterns, such as visual structure predicts perceived style, and that traits like Openness and Neuroticism influence preference patterns. High-Openness users prefer balanced, clean layouts. Low-Neuroticism users favor lighter, irregular forms. Some personality-feature pairs follow inverted-U trends, where moderate structural complexity leads to higher preference. These results connect cognitive traits with visual structure and support interpretable, personality aware modeling of aesthetic response. Our findings support personalized style discovery and open up new directions for interest-driven aesthetic education and digital preservation. Code available at https://github.com/tianchengliu18/kai2trait.