Wonder, appreciation, and the value of art

Aesthetic emotions are affected by context: a psychometric network analysis

Aesthetic emotions are defined as emotions arising when a person evaluates a stimulus for its aesthetic appeal. Whether these emotions are unique to aesthetic activities is debated. We address this debate by examining if recollections of different types of engaging activities entail different emotional profiles. A large sample of participants were asked to recall engaging aesthetic (N = 167), non-aesthetic (N = 160), or consumer (N = 172) activities. They rated the extent to which 75 candidate aesthetic emotions were evoked by these activities. We applied a computational psychometric network approach to represent and compare the space of these emotions across the three conditions. At the behavioral level, recalled aesthetic activities were rated as the least vivid but most intense compared to the two other conditions. At the network level, we found several quantitative differences across the three conditions, related to the typology, community (clusters) and core nodes (emotions) of these networks. Our results suggest that aesthetic and non-aesthetic activities evoke emotional spaces differently. Thus, we propose that aesthetic emotions are distributed differently in a multidimensional aesthetic space than for other engaging activities. Our results highlight the context-specificity of aesthetic emotions.

A time with e-Natureza (e-Nature): a model of nature-based health interventions as a complex adaptive system

Discussions surrounding the positive impacts of nature on human health and strategies to enhance our connection with the natural world have been ongoing. However, a limited number of theoretical models are available to guide research and practice in this area. Therefore, there is a pressing need for a systematic framework that outlines clear steps for conducting research implementing nature-based interventions. In this study, we investigate the relationship between health and nature through the lens of Complex Adaptive Systems. This approach involves examining the dynamic interactions between multiple interconnected elements to understand the complex emergent behaviors that arise from such relationships. Our model is designed to support nature-based interventions, considering the essential interdependence between humans and nature. This perspective aims to improve both human health and biodiversity conservation in a mutually beneficial manner. The underlying interactions that drive nature-based health interventions are thoroughly explored, leading us to propose a novel intervention model named "A time with e-Natureza" (e-Nature). This model encompasses four types of experiences, drawing from scientific literature and insights from authors engaged in an interdisciplinary research group: (1) Aesthetic and emotional experience; (2) Multisensory integration experience; (3) Knowledge experience; and (4) Engagement experience. Each experience within the model targets affective, cognitive, and behavioral aspects, with a specific focus on fostering a deeper connection with nature. Distinct activities are incorporated within each experience to promote successful outcomes. The model is grounded in existing theories that address the human-nature relationship and is informed by Nursing theories that support health promotion interventions. By presenting this new model, our aim is to contribute to the effective implementation of nature-based interventions that not only enhance human well-being but also support the conservation of nature. This integrated approach recognizes the mutual benefits of human-nature interaction and offers valuable insights for future research and practical applications in the fields of nature and health.

Machine learning revealed symbolism, emotionality, and imaginativeness as primary predictors of creativity evaluations of western art paintings

Creativity is a compelling yet elusive phenomenon, especially when manifested in visual art, where its evaluation is often a subjective and complex process. Understanding how individuals judge creativity in visual art is a particularly intriguing question. Conventional linear approaches often fail to capture the intricate nature of human behavior underlying such judgments. Therefore, in this study, we employed interpretable machine learning to probe complex associations between 17 subjective art-attributes and creativity judgments across a diverse range of artworks. A cohort of 78 non-art expert participants assessed 54 artworks varying in styles and motifs. The applied Random Forests regressor models accounted for 30% of the variability in creativity judgments given our set of art-attributes. Our analyses revealed symbolism, emotionality, and imaginativeness as the primary attributes influencing creativity judgments. Abstractness, valence, and complexity also had an impact, albeit to a lesser degree. Notably, we observed non-linearity in the relationship between art-attribute scores and creativity judgments, indicating that changes in art-attributes did not consistently correspond to changes in creativity judgments. Employing statistical learning, this investigation presents the first attribute-integrating quantitative model of factors that contribute to creativity judgments in visual art among novice raters. Our research represents a significant stride forward building the groundwork for first causal models for future investigations in art and creativity research and offering implications for diverse practical applications. Beyond enhancing comprehension of the intricate interplay and specificity of attributes used in evaluating creativity, this work introduces machine learning as an innovative approach in the field of subjective judgment.

The role of the body in the experience of installation art: a case study of visitors' bodily, emotional, and transformative experiences in Tomás Saraceno's "in orbit"

Installation art, with its immersive and participatory character, has been argued to require the use and awareness of the body, which potentially constitute key parts of the artwork's experience and appreciation. Heightened body awareness is even argued to be a key to particularly profound emotional or even transformative states, which have been frequently ascribed to this genre. However, the body in the experience of installation art has rarely been empirically considered. To address this gap, we investigated the body's role in the experience of Tomás Saraceno's in orbit installation. Based on a list of self-report items created from a review of the theoretical literature, we-for the first time-captured (quantitatively and qualitatively): what kind of subjective bodily experiences visitors (N = 230) reported, how these items grouped into clusters (using network science), and how these relate to emotion, art appraisal, and transformative outcomes. Network analysis of the items determined four communities related to "interoception," "presence," "disturbance," and "proprioception." Proprioception (e.g., awareness of balance/movement/weight) turned out to be a significant determinant of art appreciation in our study, and, together with "disturbing" body experiences (feeling awkward/watched/chills), coincided with transformation. We also assessed individual differences in body awareness yet did not find that these moderate those relationships. We suggest future research on installation art based on a more unified assessment of the role of the body in embodied-enactive aesthetics and its relation to the intensity and impact of art experience in general.

Repeating patterns: Predictive processing suggests an aesthetic learning role of the basal ganglia in repetitive stereotyped behaviors

Recurrent, unvarying, and seemingly purposeless patterns of action and cognition are part of normal development, but also feature prominently in several neuropsychiatric conditions. Repetitive stereotyped behaviors (RSBs) can be viewed as exaggerated forms of learned habits and frequently correlate with alterations in motor, limbic, and associative basal ganglia circuits. However, it is still unclear how altered basal ganglia feedback signals actually relate to the phenomenological variability of RSBs. Why do behaviorally overlapping phenomena sometimes require different treatment approaches−for example, sensory shielding strategies versus exposure therapy for autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder, respectively? Certain clues may be found in recent models of basal ganglia function that extend well beyond action selection and motivational control, and have implications for sensorimotor integration, prediction, learning under uncertainty, as well as aesthetic learning. In this paper, we systematically compare three exemplary conditions with basal ganglia involvement, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Parkinson’s disease, and autism spectrum conditions, to gain a new understanding of RSBs. We integrate clinical observations and neuroanatomical and neurophysiological alterations with accounts employing the predictive processing framework. Based on this review, we suggest that basal ganglia feedback plays a central role in preconditioning cortical networks to anticipate self-generated, movement-related perception. In this way, basal ganglia feedback appears ideally situated to adjust the salience of sensory signals through precision weighting of (external) new sensory information, relative to the precision of (internal) predictions based on prior generated models. Accordingly, behavioral policies may preferentially rely on new data versus existing knowledge, in a spectrum spanning between novelty and stability. RSBs may then represent compensatory or reactive responses, respectively, at the opposite ends of this spectrum. This view places an important role of aesthetic learning on basal ganglia feedback, may account for observed changes in creativity and aesthetic experience in basal ganglia disorders, is empirically testable, and may inform creative art therapies in conditions characterized by stereotyped behaviors.

Wondering Awe as a Perceptive Aspect of Spirituality and Its Relation to Indicators of Wellbeing: Frequency of Perception and Underlying Triggers

Background: Spirituality is a multidimensional construct which includes religious, existentialistic, and relational issues and has different layers such as faith as the core, related attitudes and conviction, and subsequent behaviors and practices. The perceptive aspects of spirituality such as wondering awe are of relevance for both, religious and non-religious persons. These perceptions were related to perceiving the Sacred in life, mindful awareness of nature, others and self, to compassion, meaning in life, and emotional wellbeing. As awe perceptions are foremost a matter of state, it was the aim (1) to empirically analyze the frequency of wondering awe perceptions (i.e., with respect to gender, age cohorts, religious or non-religious persons) and (2) to qualitatively analyze a range of triggers of awe perceptions.

Methods: Data from 7,928 participants were analyzed with respect to the frequency of Awe/Gratitude perceptions (GrAw-7 scale), while for the second part of the study responses of a heterogeneous group of 82 persons what caused them to perceive moments of wondering awe were analyzed with qualitative content analysis techniques.

Results: Persons who experience Awe/Gratitude to a low extend were the youngest and had lowest wellbeing and lowest meditation/praying engagement, while those with high GrAw-7 scores were the oldest, had the highest wellbeing, and were more often meditating or praying (p<0.001). Gender had a significant effect on these perceptions, too (Cohen’s d=0.32). In the qualitative part, the triggers can be attributed to four main categories, Nature, Persons, Unique Moments, and Aesthetics, Beauty, and Devotion. Some of these triggers and related perceptions might be more a matter of admiration than wondering awe, while other perceptions could have more profound effects and may thus result in changes of a person’s attitudes and behaviors.

Conclusion: Emotionally touching experiences of wondering awe may result in feelings of interconnectedness, prosocial behavior, mindful awareness, and contribute to a person’s meaning in life and wellbeing and can also be a health-relevant resource. These perceptions can be seen as a perceptive aspect of spirituality, which is not exclusively experienced by religious people but also by non-religious persons.

Enacting Media. An Embodied Account of Enculturation Between Neuromediality and New Cognitive Media Theory

This paper argues that the still-emerging paradigm of situated cognition requires a more systematic perspective on media to capture the enculturation of the human mind. By virtue of being media, cultural artifacts present central experiential models of the world for our embodied minds to latch onto. The paper identifies references to external media within embodied, extended, enactive, and predictive approaches to cognition, which remain underdeveloped in terms of the profound impact that media have on our mind. To grasp this impact, I propose an enactive account of media that is based on expansive habits as media-structured, embodied ways of bringing forth meaning and new domains of values. We apply such habits, for instance, when seeing a picture or perceiving a movie. They become established through a process of reciprocal adaptation between media artifacts and organisms and define the range of viable actions within such a media ecology. Within an artifactual habit, we then become attuned to a specific media work (e.g., a TV series, a picture, a text, or even a city) that engages us. Both the plurality of habits and the dynamical adjustments within a habit require a more flexible neural architecture than is addressed by classical cognitive neuroscience. To detail how neural and media processes interlock, I will introduce the concept of neuromediality and discuss radical predictive processing accounts that could contribute to the externalization of the mind by treating media themselves as generative models of the world. After a short primer on general media theory, I discuss media examples in three domains: pictures and moving images; digital media; architecture and the built environment. This discussion demonstrates the need for a new cognitive media theory based on enactive artifactual habits-one that will help us gain perspective on the continuous re-mediation of our mind.

The Aesthetic Self. The Importance of Aesthetic Taste in Music and Art for Our Perceived Identity

To what extent do aesthetic taste and our interest in the arts constitute who we are? In this paper, we present a series of empirical findings that suggest an Aesthetic Self Effect supporting the claim that our aesthetic engagements are a central component of our identity. Counterfactual changes in aesthetic preferences, for example, moving from liking classical music to liking pop, are perceived as altering us as a person. The Aesthetic Self Effect is as strong as the impact of moral changes, such as altering political partisanship or religious orientation, and significantly stronger than for other categories of taste, such as food preferences (Study 1). Using a multidimensional scaling technique to map perceived aesthetic similarities among musical genres, we determined that aesthetic distances between genres correlate highly with the perceived difference in identity (Study 2). Further studies generalize the Aesthetic Self Effect beyond the musical domain: general changes in visual art preferences, for example from more traditional to abstract art, also elicited a strong Self Effect (Study 3). Exploring the breadth of this effect we also found an Anaesthetic Self Effect. That is, hypothetical changes from aesthetic indifference to caring about music, art, or beauty are judged to have a significant impact on identity. This effect on identity is stronger for aesthetic fields compared to leisure activities, such as hiking or playing video games (Study 4). Across our studies, the Anaesthetic Self Effect turns out to be stronger than the Aesthetic Self Effect. Taken together, we found evidence for a link between aesthetics and identity: we are aesthetic selves. When our tastes in music and the arts or our aesthetic interests change we take these to be transformative changes.

Awe and the Experience of the Sublime: A Complex Relationship

Awe seems to be a complex emotion or emotional construct characterized by a mix of positive (contentment, happiness), and negative affective components (fear and a sense of being smaller, humbler or insignificant). It is striking that the elicitors of awe correspond closely to what philosophical aesthetics, and especially Burke and Kant, have called “the sublime.” As a matter of fact, awe is almost absent from the philosophical agenda, while there are very few studies on the experience of the sublime as such in the psychological literature. The aim of this paper is to throw light on the complex relationship between awe (as understood by psychologists) and the experience of the sublime (as discussed by philosophers). We distinguish seven ways of conceiving this relationship and highlight those that seem more promising to us. Once we have a clearer picture of how awe and the experience of the sublime are related, we can use it to enhance collaboration between these domains. We would be able to use empirical results about awe in a philosophical analysis of the experience of the sublime, which in turn can help us to design novel experimental hypotheses about the contexts in which we experience awe.

Grounding evaluative concepts

Evaluative concepts qualify as abstract because they seem to go beyond what is given in experience. This is especially clear in the case of moral concepts. Justice, for example, has no fixed appearance. Less obviously, aesthetic concepts may also qualify as abstract. The very same sensory input can be regarded as beautiful by one person and ugly by another. Artistic success can also transcend sensory accessible features. Here, we focus on moral badness and aesthetic goodness and argue that both can be grounded in emotional responses. Emotions, in turn, are grounded in bodily perceptions, which correspond to action tendencies. When we conceptualize something as good or bad (whether in the moral or aesthetic domain), we experience our bodily responses to that thing. The moral and aesthetic domains are distinguished by the emotions that they involve.This article is part of the theme issue 'Varieties of abstract concepts: development, use and representation in the brain'.

Beholders' sensorimotor engagement enhances aesthetic rating of pictorial facial expressions of pain

The present study addresses a novel issue by investigating whether beholders' sensorimotor engagement with the emotional content of works of art contributes to the formation of their objective aesthetic judgment of beauty. To this purpose, participants' sensorimotor engagement was modulated by asking them to overtly contract the Corrugator Supercilii facial muscles or to refrain from any voluntary facial movement while judging the aesthetic value of painful and neutral facial expressions in select examples of Renaissance and Baroque paintings. Results demonstrated a specific increase in the aesthetic rating of paintings showing painful facial expressions during the congruent activation of the Corrugator Supercilii muscles. Furthermore, participants' empathetic traits and expertise in art were found to correlate directly with the amplitude of the motor enactment effect on aesthetic judgments. For the first time, we show the role of bottom-up bodily driven sensorimotor processes in the objective aesthetic evaluation of works of art.