Aptness and beauty in metaphor

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 316-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARGUERITE MCQUIRE ◽  
LAUREN MCCOLLUM ◽  
ANJAN CHATTERJEE
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Emotional Content ◽  
Elderly Adults ◽  
Single Sentence ◽  
Psycholinguistic Variables ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Judgments

abstractMetaphors are comparisons that link dissimilar conceptual domains. We hypothesized that the aptness of a metaphor is linked to the reader’s experience of beauty, and that age and expertise influence these aesthetic judgments. We had young adults, literary experts, and elderly adults rate metaphors for beauty or aptness. Experimental materials consisted of single-sentence novel metaphors whose familiarity, figurativeness, imageability, interpretability, and overall valence ratings were known. Results suggest that beauty and aptness of metaphors are linked for elderly adults but are orthogonal for young adults and literary experts. Elderly participants seem to conflate emotional content with aptness. Young adults are most swayed by a perceived feeling of familiarity when rating for aptness, but not for beauty. Literary experts are relatively unaffected by the psycholinguistic variables, suggesting an emotionally distanced approach to these sentences. Individual differences in literary training and life experience have varying effects on the aesthetic experience of metaphor in regard to beauty and aptness.

Aesthetic Judgments and Their Cultural Grounding

2019 ◽  
Vol 2018 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-281
Author(s):  
Stefan Majetschak
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Object ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Complex Approach ◽  
Cultural Grounding ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Judgments

Abstract At present, the theoretical approaches of Baumgarten and Kant continue to constitute the framework for discussing the nature of aesthetic judgments about art, including the question of what such judgments are really articulating. In distinction to those two eighteenth-century theorists, today we would largely avoid an assumption that aesthetic judgments necessarily attribute beauty to the objects being judged; we would as a rule take a far more complex approach to the topic. But whatever we say about art, even today many theorists wish to ground aesthetic judgments in particularities of the aesthetic object, like Baumgarten, or in specific moments of the aesthetic experience, like Kant.

A picture is worth a thousand words! How visual storytelling transforms the aesthetic experience of novel designs

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (7) ◽  
pp. 913-926 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christin Seifert ◽  
Veena Chattaraman
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Visual Design ◽  
Cognitive Responses ◽  
Holistic Model ◽  
Significant Interaction Effect ◽  
Visual Storytelling ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Judgments

Purpose This study aims to provide a holistic understanding of how visual storytelling influences the objective and subjective cognitive responses of consumers, namely objective aesthetic impression and subjective aesthetic association, and aesthetic judgments in response to differing levels of novelty in design innovations. Design/methodology/approach A mixed-factorial experimental study manipulating the novelty of chair designs (moderate/high) and visual design stories (present/absent) was conducted among 263 female US consumers to test the proposed research model. Findings With respect to the main effects of novelty and visual design stories, consumers had more positive cognitive responses and aesthetic judgments to: product designs with moderate (vs high) novelty; and products with visual design stories than without. A significant interaction effect uncovered that visual design stories particularly aided products with high (vs moderate) design novelty with respect to objective aesthetic impressions. Examination of the structural relationships between the variables revealed that subjective aesthetic associations mediate the relationship between objective aesthetic impressions and aesthetic judgments. Practical implications To mitigate risk in radical design innovations, marketers should use visual storytelling to communicate product form associations and enable consumers to successfully decode the meaning of novel designs during initial encounters. Originality/value By examining a holistic model involving both perceptual and conceptual product concepts, this study fills a critical research void to develop insightful implications on bridging the gap between novel product designs and consumer understanding.

scholarly journals AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE AND AESTHETIC JUDGMENTS: THE FEATURES OF THE RELATIONSHIPS

2020 ◽  
pp. 187-194
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Judgment ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Complete Absorption ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Aesthetic Judgments

The article examines the essence and relationship of aesthetic experience and aesthetic judgment. It is argued that philosophical aesthetics deals with constants that are fundamental to aesthetic experience. Such constants are phenomena and characteristics that have a fundamental ontological status in the aesthetic sphere. It was found that the ontological characteristic of aesthetic experience is that it is not reducible to “pure” rationality, that is, it is not something that is “adapted” to complete and final comprehension by the mind alone. Therefore, a complete “absorption” of aesthetic experience by a certain semantic structure is impossible: such experience always goes beyond any discursive boundaries and simultaneously opens them. In addition, aesthetic experience serves as one of the means of a person’s “contact” with the world and society. Forming on the material of sensations, aesthetic experience extends from the most general ideas about the universe to the inner life of a person. The analysis also showed that the formulation of an aesthetic judgment is based on the concepts of the perfect and the imperfect. In turn, the mastery of such concepts is carried out in the process of correlating a certain aesthetic fact with the existing value scale. That is why aesthetic judgments have signs of normativity. They also create the basis for a common worldview and attitude, lay the foundation for mutual understanding between people of a certain culture. The study showed that the process of aesthetic assessment is a constant correlation of the existing state of affairs with something ideal (within a certain value scale), this is a permanent “demand” for perfection, as well as a tireless search for an opportunity to fulfill this “demand”. At the same time, ethical experience is dissociated from “pure” pragmatics, which personifies vital necessity, because the aesthetic sphere is always associated with a certain “redundancy” in human existence. Also, the results obtained in the course of the study suggested that philosophical aesthetics, which takes into account and investigates the specificity of the phenomenon of corporeality, as well as such phenomena of human existence as affective sensitivity and sensitive rationality, is able to overcome the limitation of “an-esthetic” naturalism in aesthetics.

scholarly journals The Impact of Motor Imageries on Aesthetic Judgment of Chinese Calligraphy: An fMRI Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingcheng He ◽  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Hira Shahid ◽  
Yushan Liu ◽  
Xiaoling Liang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Motor Imagery ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Judgment ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Chinese Calligraphy ◽  
Imaging Results ◽  
Kinesthetic Imagery ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Aesthetic Judgments

Previous behavioral studies on aesthetics demonstrated that there was a close association between perceived action and aesthetic appreciation. However, few studies explored whether motor imagery would influence aesthetic experience and its neural substrates. In the current study, Chinese calligraphy was used as the stimuli to explore the relationship between the motor imagery and the aesthetic judgments of a participant using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The imaging results showed that, compared with the baseline, the activation of the brain regions [e.g., anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), putamen, and insula] involved in perceptual processing, cognitive judgments, aesthetic emotional, and reward processing was observed after the participants performed motor imagery tasks. The contrast analyses within aesthetic judgments showed that the kinesthetic imagery significantly activated the middle frontal gyrus, postcentral gyrus, ACC, and thalamus. Generally, these areas were considered to be closely related to positive aesthetic experience and suggested that motor imagery, especially kinesthetic imagery, might be specifically associated with the aesthetic appreciation of Chinese calligraphy.

scholarly journals Aesthetic Preference for Glossy Materials: An Attempted Replication and Extension

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Paul J. Silvia ◽  
Rebekah M. Rodriguez ◽  
Katherine N. Cotter ◽  
Alexander P. Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Openness To Experience ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Confounding Factors ◽  
Aesthetic Appreciation ◽  
Color Quality ◽  
Weak Evidence ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Attempted Replication

The psychology of art and aesthetics has a long-standing interest in how low-level features, such as symmetry, curvature, and color, affect people’s aesthetic experience. Recent research in this tradition suggests that people find glossy, shiny objects and materials more attractive than flat, matte ones. The present experiment sought to replicate and extend research on the attractiveness of images printed on glossy and flat paper. To control for several possible confounding factors, glossiness was manipulated between-person and varied with methods that held constant factors like weight, color quality, and resolution. To extend past work, we explored art expertise and Openness to Experience as potential moderators. A sample of 100 adults viewed landscape photographs on either high-gloss photo paper or on identical paper in which a flat, matte spray finish had been applied. Ratings of attractiveness showed weak evidence for replication. People rated the glossy pictures as more attractive than the matte ones, but the effect size was small (d = −0.23 [−0.62, 0.16]) and not statistically significant. Attractiveness ratings were significantly moderated, however, by individual differences in the aesthetic appreciation facet of Openness to Experience. When aesthetic appreciation was high, people found the images attractive regardless of condition; when it was low, people strongly preferred the glossy images over the matte ones, thus showing the classic glossiness effect. We conclude with some methodological caveats for future research.

The Empirical Aesthetics of Music

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elvira Brattico
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Aesthetic Response ◽  
Evaluative Judgments ◽  
Aesthetic Responses ◽  
Stimulus Features ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Individual

This chapter provides a structured overview of studies accounting for the aesthetic responses to music. Bottom-up accounts linking preference with determined stimulus features are distinguished from other cognitivist, emotivist, or contextual accounts putting more weight on nonappearance properties related to the individual life experience. Additionally, models of the musical aesthetic experience that emphasize psychological processes are illustrated as distinct from models that account also for the neural mechanisms involved. While most findings concentrate on the aesthetic response of pleasure or preference, fresh efforts are projected toward understanding other aesthetically tinged dimensions such as evaluative judgments and attitudes. Naturalistic approaches are promising toward understanding from the daily drive to musical activities to the life-changing peak experiences of music.

Schopenhauer and the Paradox of the Sublime

2020 ◽  
pp. 237-255
Author(s):  
Bart Vandenabeele
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Aesthetic Object ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The World ◽  
The Aesthetic

Schopenhauer explores the paradoxical nature of the aesthetic experience of the sublime in a richer way than his predecessors did by rightfully emphasizing the prominent role of the aesthetic object and the ultimately affirmative character of the pleasurable experience it offers. Unlike Kant, Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the sublime does not appeal to the superiority of human reason over nature but affirms the ultimately “superhuman” unity of the world, of which the human being is merely a puny fragment. The author focuses on Schopenhauer’s treatment of the experience of the sublime in nature and argues that Schopenhauer makes two distinct attempts to resolve the paradox of the sublime and that Schopenhauer’s second attempt, which has been neglected in the literature, establishes the sublime as a viable aesthetic concept with profound significance.

Exploring Tourist Behavior in a Reused Heritage Site

2021 ◽  
pp. 109634802110200
Author(s):  
Yi-Ju Lee ◽  
I-Ying Tsai ◽  
Te-Yi Chang
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Intention ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Tourist Behavior ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
Modeling Analysis ◽  
Heritage Buildings ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

This study investigated the relationship among tourists’ perceived sustainability, aesthetic experience, and behavioral intention toward reused heritage buildings by employing stimulus–organism–response theory. There were 354 valid questionnaires collected from the Sputnik Lab in Tainan, Taiwan. A positive correlation was found between tourists’ perception of sustainability and aesthetic experience. When tourists perceived higher aesthetic experience, they also had stronger behavioral intention. Structural equation modeling analysis verified that the aesthetic experience of tourists had mediating effects between perceived sustainability and behavioral intention in the reused heritage space. The reuse of space should be attached significantly to the aesthetic display of space and service so as to promote such scenic spots and increase tourists’ intention to revisit through word of mouth.

The Role of Understanding on Architectural Beauty: Evidence From the Impact of Semantic Description on the Aesthetic Evaluation of Architecture

2021 ◽  
pp. 003329412110021
Author(s):  
Sizhe Liu ◽  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Xianyou He ◽  
Xiaoxiang Tang ◽  
Shuxian Lai ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Supplementary Information ◽  
Aesthetic Evaluation ◽  
Abstract Description ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Appearance Design ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Impact

There is evidence that greater aesthetic experience can be linked to artworks when their corresponding meanings can be successfully inferred and understood. Modern cultural-expo architecture can be considered a form of artistic creation and design, and the corresponding design philosophy may be derived from representational objects or abstract social meanings. The present study investigates whether cultural-expo architecture with an easy-to-understand architectural appearance design is perceived as more beautiful and how architectural photographs and different types of descriptions of architectural appearance designs interact and produce higher aesthetic evaluations. The results showed an obvious aesthetic preference for cultural-expo architecture with an easy-to-understand architectural appearance design (Experiment 1). Moreover, we found that the aesthetic rating score of architectural photographs accompanied by an abstract description was significantly higher than that of those accompanied by a representational description only under the difficult-to-understand design condition (Experiment 2). The results indicated that people preferred cultural-expo architecture with an easy-to-understand architectural appearance design due to a greater understanding of the design, providing further evidence that abstract descriptions can provide supplementary information and explanation to enhance the sense of beauty of abstract cultural-expo architecture.

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