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Li J, An Y, Xia T. The aesthetic experience of general beauty and ugly-cute memes: the role of emotion. Front Psychol 2024; 15:1340552. [PMID: 38725958 PMCID: PMC11081069 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1340552] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/21/2023] [Accepted: 04/04/2024] [Indexed: 05/12/2024] Open
Abstract
Generally, beauty has been regarded as an outward expression of elegance and harmony, providing visual pleasure and evoking a sense of aesthetic enjoyment. However, in recent years, a phenomenon called "ugly-cute" has emerged, challenging the conventional standards of beauty by embracing a form of "ugliness" to enhance its appeal. The reasons and mechanisms behind this phenomenon remain largely unexplored so far. This study aims to investigate the role of emotions, such as pleasure, humor, and surprise, in the relationship between ugly-cute characteristics and attractiveness. The findings reveal that general beauty directly generates attractiveness by eliciting pleasurable emotions, whereas ugly-cute memes achieve attractiveness by inducing pleasurable emotions through the mediation of humor. Furthermore, while both "ugly" and "ugly-cute" memes evoke a sense of surprise, that elicited by ugly-cute memes is accompanied by a humorous response, thereby enhancing their attractiveness, whereas the "ugly" memes fail to evoke humor and lack attractiveness. Finally, we discuss the potential implications and practical value of the current research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Juan Li
- School of Educational Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China
| | - Yi An
- School of Art and Design, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China
| | - Tiansheng Xia
- School of Art and Design, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China
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Jacobi C, Varga PJ, Jessani Z, Vaidyanathan B. Individual differences in scientists' aesthetic disposition, aesthetic experiences, and aesthetic sensitivity in scientific work. Front Psychol 2024; 14:1197870. [PMID: 38259562 PMCID: PMC10800433 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1197870] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/31/2023] [Accepted: 08/23/2023] [Indexed: 01/24/2024] Open
Abstract
Introduction The role of personality in shaping engagement with aesthetics in science has been almost entirely unexplored. Whereas artists and arts settings (e.g., museums) are well-studied from a psychological perspective, the practice of science has often been seen as purely rational or dry. In response, this study presents novel findings on the critical role of scientists' individual differences, which shape their engagement with aesthetics, such as the frequency of their experiences of beauty, wonder, and awe in their scientific work. Methods Based on a very large and representative four-country study of scientists in the fields of biology and physics (N = 3,092), this study analyzed the associations of Big Five personality traits among scientists with (i) dispositional aesthetics (DPES-awe), (ii) the frequency of aesthetic experiences in scientific work, and (iii) aesthetic sensitivity in science. These survey-weighted OLS regression models included extensive statistical controls for sociodemographic factors. Results As hypothesized, openness is positively, and neuroticism is negatively linked with dispositional aesthetics, the frequency of aesthetic experiences in scientific work, and aesthetic sensitivity in science. Unexpectedly, agreeableness and conscientiousness (but not extraversion) are highly significant and strong predictors of the three trait and state aesthetic engagement variables. Discussion The aesthetic engagement and personality framework of this paper is empirically supported and demonstrates the importance of personality types of scientists in the practice of science. The unexpectedly strong association of agreeableness with aesthetic engagement points to the importance of cooperation, collaboration, and communication to maximize scientific creativity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christopher Jacobi
- Department of Sociology, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, United States
| | - Peter J. Varga
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
| | - Zohaib Jessani
- Department of Psychology, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, United States
| | - Brandon Vaidyanathan
- Department of Sociology, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, United States
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Świątek AH, Szcześniak M, Wojtkowiak K, Stempień M, Chmiel M. Polish version of the Aesthetic Experience Questionnaire: validation and psychometric characteristics. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1214928. [PMID: 37720630 PMCID: PMC10501565 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1214928] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/30/2023] [Accepted: 08/03/2023] [Indexed: 09/19/2023] Open
Abstract
Introduction The purpose of the article is to present the results of works on the Polish version of the Aesthetic Experience Questionnaire (AEQ). The AEQ is a 22-item tool for assessing aesthetic experience in the following dimensions: emotional, cultural, perceptual, understanding, and two dimensions about flow (proximal conditions and flow experience). Methods In the course of works on the Polish version of the AEQ, 3 independent studies with the participation of more than 800 people were carried out. In addition to the AEQ measurement, the tools included: the Emotion Regulation Strategies for Artistic Creative Activities Scale, the Brief Music in Mood Regulation, the Aesthetic Competence Scale, the Aesthetic Processing Preference Scale, the Need for Cognition Scale, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies - Depression Scale, the Material Values Scale and the Multidimensional Existential Meaning Scale. Results The results obtained in the three studies through Confirmatory Factor Analysis indicated the compliance of the factor structure of the Polish version of the AEQ with the original and its good psychometric characteristics. It was also shown that the overall result and individual components of the aesthetic experience correlate positively with emotion regulation through artistic creative activities and mood regulation through music, aesthetic competences (music, literature, plastic arts, film), cognitive curiosity and some dimensions of aesthetic processing preferences. The studies also proved a very weak positive relationship between aesthetic experience and meaning of life. The assumption about a negative correlation between aesthetic experience and depression or materialism was not confirmed. Discussion The Polish version of the AEQ is a credible psychometric measurement and encourages scientists to design research on the psychology of art and aesthetics in the Polish cultural conditions.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Małgorzata Szcześniak
- Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Psychology, University of Szczecin, Szczecin, Poland
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Cotter KN, Rodriguez-Boerwinkle RM, Christensen AP, Fekete A, Smith JK, Smith LF, Tinio PPL, Silvia PJ. Updating the Aesthetic Fluency Scale: Revised long and short forms for research in the psychology of the arts. PLoS One 2023; 18:e0281547. [PMID: 36753527 PMCID: PMC9907807 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0281547] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/13/2022] [Accepted: 01/25/2023] [Indexed: 02/09/2023] Open
Abstract
People's knowledge about the arts shapes how they experience and engage with art. Since its introduction, the 10-item Aesthetic Fluency Scale has been widely used to measure self-reported art knowledge. Drawing from findings and researchers' experience since then, the present work develops and evaluates a Revised Aesthetic Fluency Scale using item response theory to broaden its scope (36 items) and refine its response scale. In a large sample (n = 2,089 English-speaking adults), Study 1 found strong evidence for unidimensionality, good item fit, and a difficulty level suitable for its targeted population; Study 2 (n = 392) provided initial evidence for score validity via relationships with art engagement, Openness to Experience, and aesthetic responsiveness; and Study 3 derived a brief, 10-item form for time-constrained projects. Taken together, the revised scales build upon lessons learned from the original and appear promising for the next generation of research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Katherine N. Cotter
- Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
| | | | - Alexander P. Christensen
- Department of Psychology and Human Development, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
| | - Anna Fekete
- Department of Cognition, Emotions and Methods in Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Jeffrey K. Smith
- College of Education, University of Otago, Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand
| | - Lisa F. Smith
- College of Education, University of Otago, Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand
| | - Pablo P. L. Tinio
- Educational Foundations Department, Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey, United States of America
| | - Paul J. Silvia
- Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina, United States of America
- * E-mail:
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Christensen AP, Cardillo ER, Chatterjee A. What kind of impacts can artwork have on viewers? Establishing a taxonomy for aesthetic impacts. Br J Psychol 2022; 114:335-351. [PMID: 36519205 DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12623] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/19/2022] [Accepted: 12/05/2022] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
Abstract
What kinds of impacts can visual art have on a viewer? To identify potential art impacts, we recruited five aesthetics experts from different academic disciplines: art history, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology and theology. Together, the group curated a set of terms that corresponded to descriptive features (124 terms) and cognitive-affective impacts (69 terms) of artworks. Using these terms as prompts, participants (n = 899) were given one minute to generate words for each term related to how an artwork looked (descriptive features) or made them think or feel (cognitive-affective impacts). Using network psychometric approaches, we identified terms that were semantically similar based on participants' responses and applied hierarchical exploratory graph analysis to map the relationships between the terms. Our analyses identified 17 descriptive dimensions, which could be further reduced to 5, and 11 impact dimensions, which could be further reduced to 4. The resulting taxonomy demonstrated overlap between the descriptive and impact networks as well as consistency with empirical evidence. This taxonomy could serve as the foundation to empirically evaluate art's impacts on viewers.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexander P Christensen
- Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.,Psychology and Human Development, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
| | - Eileen R Cardillo
- Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Anjan Chatterjee
- Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
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Dimensions, Measures, and Contexts in Psychological Investigations of Curiosity: A Scoping Review. Behav Sci (Basel) 2022; 12:bs12120493. [PMID: 36546976 PMCID: PMC9774665 DOI: 10.3390/bs12120493] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/08/2022] [Revised: 11/24/2022] [Accepted: 11/28/2022] [Indexed: 12/10/2022] Open
Abstract
The study of curiosity as a construct has led to many conceptualisations, comprising of different dimensions. Due to this, various scales of curiosity have also been developed. Moreover, some researchers have conceived of curiosity as a general trait-like, while others have included contexts, such as the workplace, or education when investigating curiosity. This scoping review aims to scope the extant psychological literature on curiosity in order to better understand how it has been studied, specifically with regard to its dimensions, measures, and contexts. A total of 1194 records were identified, with 245 articles meeting the inclusion criteria. Results suggest that the majority of curiosity research examined curiosity as having multiple dimensions and analysed the dimensions individually, with a deprivation-type curiosity playing the biggest role. The measure most commonly used was the Epistemic Curiosity Scale, which also consisted of a deprivation-type curiosity as one of the dimensions. Findings also implied that curiosity was most studied in the context of the workplace. Supplementary findings included a lack of representation of non-Western countries, as well as needing to cross-validate a recently developed curiosity scale. This scoping review represents a consolidation of the curiosity literature and how it can further prosper.
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Abstract
A physical process is characterized as complex when it is difficult to analyze and explain in a simple way, and even more difficult to predict. The complexity within an art painting is expected to be high, possibly comparable to that of nature. Herein, we apply a 2D stochastic methodology to images of both portrait photography and artistic portraits, the latter belonging to different genres of art, with the aim to better understand their variability in quantitative terms. To quantify the dependence structure and variability, we estimate the Hurst parameter, which is a common dependence metric for hydrometeorological processes. We also seek connections between the identified stochastic patterns and the desideratum that each art movement aimed to express. Results show remarkable stochastic similarities between portrait paintings, linked to philosophical, cultural and theological characteristics of each period.
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Aesthetical Issues of Leonardo Da Vinci’s and Pablo Picasso’s Paintings with Stochastic Evaluation. HERITAGE 2020. [DOI: 10.3390/heritage3020017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
A physical process is characterized as complex when it is difficult to analyze or explain in a simple way. The complexity within an art painting is expected to be high, possibly comparable to that of nature. Therefore, constructions of artists (e.g., paintings, music, literature, etc.) are expected to be also of high complexity since they are produced by numerous human (e.g., logic, instinct, emotions, etc.) and non-human (e.g., quality of paints, paper, tools, etc.) processes interacting with each other in a complex manner. The result of the interaction among various processes is not a white-noise behavior, but one where clusters of high or low values of quantified attributes appear in a non-predictive manner, thus highly increasing the uncertainty and the variability. In this work, we analyze stochastic patterns in terms of the dependence structure of art paintings of Da Vinci and Picasso with a stochastic 2D tool and investigate the similarities or differences among the artworks.
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Johnson SGB, Steinerberger S. Intuitions about mathematical beauty: A case study in the aesthetic experience of ideas. Cognition 2019; 189:242-259. [PMID: 31015078 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.04.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/14/2018] [Revised: 04/03/2019] [Accepted: 04/10/2019] [Indexed: 10/27/2022]
Abstract
Can an idea be beautiful? Mathematicians often describe arguments as "beautiful" or "dull," and famous scientists have claimed that mathematical beauty is a guide toward the truth. Do laypeople, like mathematicians and scientists, experience mathematics aesthetically? Three studies suggest that they do. When people rated the similarity of simple mathematical arguments to landscape paintings (Study 1) or pieces of classical piano music (Study 2), their similarity rankings were internally consistent across participants. Moreover, when participants rated beauty and various other potentially aesthetic dimensions for artworks and mathematical arguments, they relied mainly on the same three dimensions for judging beauty-elegance, profundity, and clarity (Study 3). These aesthetic judgments, made separately for artworks and arguments, could be used to predict similarity judgments out-of-sample. These studies also suggest a role for expertise in sharpening aesthetic intuitions about mathematics. We argue that these results shed light on broader issues in how and why humans have aesthetic experiences of abstract ideas.
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Affiliation(s)
- Samuel G B Johnson
- Division of Marketing, Business, & Society, University of Bath School of Management, United Kingdom.
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Schoeller F, Bertrand P, Gerry LJ, Jain A, Horowitz AH, Zenasni F. Combining Virtual Reality and Biofeedback to Foster Empathic Abilities in Humans. Front Psychol 2019; 9:2741. [PMID: 30804868 PMCID: PMC6370744 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02741] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/21/2018] [Accepted: 12/19/2018] [Indexed: 12/30/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Felix Schoeller
- Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires, Université Paris Descartes, Paris, France
- U1001, Institut National de la santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Paris, France
| | - Philippe Bertrand
- VR Frontiers Lab (CRI Labs), Institut Innovant de Formation par la Recherche, USPC, Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires, Paris, France
- Laboratoire de Psychologie et d'Ergonomie Appliquées (UMR), Université Paris Descartes - Sorbonne Paris Cité, Institut de Psychologie, Paris, France
- BeAnotherLab Research, BeAnotherLab Association, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Lynda Joy Gerry
- Multisensory Experience Lab, Aalborg University Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Enactive Virtuality Lab, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia
| | - Abhinandan Jain
- Fluid Interfaces Group, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, United States
| | | | - Franck Zenasni
- Laboratoire de Psychologie et d'Ergonomie Appliquées (UMR), Université Paris Descartes - Sorbonne Paris Cité, Institut de Psychologie, Paris, France
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