One Hundred Years of Empirical Aesthetics

This article reviews the history of empirical aesthetics since its foundation by Fechner in 1876 to Berlyne’s new empirical aesthetics in the 1970s. The authors explain why and how Fechner founded the field, and how Wundt and Müller’s students continued his work in the early 20th century. In the United States, empirical aesthetics flourished as part of American functional psychology at first, and later as part of behaviorists’ interest in reward value. The heyday of behaviorism was also a golden age for the development of all sorts of tests for artistic and aesthetic aptitudes. The authors end the article by covering the contributions of Gestalt psychology and Berlyne’s motivational theory to empirical aesthetics.

Appreciation Modes in Empirical Aesthetics

There are three main modes of appreciation of aesthetic objects. The first is the appreciation of aesthetic pleasure, most often beauty. A simple account of the experience of beauty is the fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure. A more complex account assumes that there are two levels of aesthetic pleasure, a shallow one based on low-level experiences like fluency, and a deep level where disfluency leads to interest. The second mode of appreciation pertains to emotions experienced in response to an artwork, as illustrated by the distancing–embracing model of aesthetic emotions. The final mode of appreciation includes understanding an artwork. Cognitive models of artistic understanding assume that processes of perception, memory, and interpretation determine cognitive mastery. From the humanities tradition, cognitive models have been criticized because they neglect the historical context of the creation of the artwork as an objective component to understanding. A recent model combines art-historical context with cognitive processes and claims that such artistic understanding is essential to aesthetic appreciation.

Empirical Aesthetics

In most people’s lives, aesthetic experiences are probably frequent and occur in multiple, often very different and idiosyncratic situations. Usually, aesthetic experience involves an episode with the experiencing person in a specific situation, stretched out over time, in which certain objects, their environment, and various constituting elements are brought together. In this chapter, the authors provide a general introduction on the importance of such contextual factors in aesthetic experiences. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the nature of aesthetic experiences as a topic beyond typical aesthetic objects, with regard to how aesthetic experiences emerge as interactions between person, objects, and environment, and thus how they are embedded in informational contexts. In particular, the importance of information context is discussed: how we frame, anticipate, explain, and understand the factors of our experience as we live them. Also examined is how, in psychological studies, extra information or titles presented with pictures and artworks, or instructions regarding the context—so-called framing effects—have been shown to affect aesthetic experiences. The chapter ends with an outlook on major challenges, goals, and future directions.

Color

The empirical study of the psychology of color dates back to the 19th century. Important in this line of research is the study of color preferences—wherein stimuli are characterized in terms of three properties: hue (i.e., wavelength), saturation (i.e., vividness), and brightness (i.e., black-to-white quality). Whereas early thinkers doubted the possibility of a systematic study of color preferences due to idiosyncrasies and individual differences in participants’ choices, a substantial body of empirical evidence has emerged to demonstrate that there are reliable regularities in color preference. Specifically, in terms of single colors, there is a clear maximum around blue and a clear minimum around yellow—a pattern also observed in animals. In terms of saturation, people tend to prefer more saturated to less saturated colors, particularly in context-free settings. In turn, results regarding brightness are more equivocal, although overall there appears to be a preference for lighter colors. Perhaps more interesting are the reasons for the aforementioned preference patterns, for which a number of theoretical explanations have been put forth based on physiology, psychophysics, emotion, and ecological objects—each of which enjoys some level of empirical support. The psychological study of color preferences is well poised for further advancement, with downstream effects in a number of settings ranging from consumer products to artworks and architecture.

Aesthetics of Dance

How does the brain see and experience dance? Performing arts have captured the attention of empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics. In this chapter, the author reviews studies from cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology that have contributed to our understanding of the brain mechanisms for dance perception. The author introduces the concept of sensorimotor aesthetics, the process whereby the observer evokes an internal simulation of the perceived action of a dance performance, during its emotional and aesthetic experience. The author proposes an embodied aesthetics framework, in which the perception of the dancer’s body, the dance movement, and the expressed emotion are significantly influenced by an observer’s prior experience. Finally, the author discusses potential avenues for enhancing interactions between the science and artistic communities in pursuit of a deeper understanding of the aesthetics of dance.

The Empirical Aesthetics of Music

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.

Facial Attractiveness

Facial attractiveness is one of the most ubiquitous forms of beauty that people encounter and value. It is a unique category in visual aesthetics because of its deep biological foundation and essential significance for social interactions. This chapter gives an overview and discusses the rich history of facial attractiveness research from four perspectives. First, the face itself is discussed, asking what makes a face attractive, with reference to local features such as eye color and spatial configurations, and global characteristics like symmetry and averageness. Attention then turns to the face bearer, and a distinction is drawn between facial attractiveness and personal characteristics like mate quality, familiarity, and the “what is beautiful is good” stereotype. Next, the chapter examines the role of the observer, and how individual characteristics explain differences in taste and effects of facial attractiveness on perception and cognition. Finally, some inherent limitations to this research are addressed.

On the Empirical Aesthetics of Plating

Plating food beautifully has traditionally been seen as more of an art than a science. However, in recent years, a growing body of research in the field of empirical aesthetics has started to demonstrate that the art of beautiful plating can, in fact, be studied scientifically. What is more, the results of such research are now providing actionable insights concerning how to deliver the most aesthetically pleasing dishes. In fact, there is an intriguing parallel here between the visual aesthetics of painting and plating. It turns out that a number (but by no means all) of the aesthetic rules worked out previously for painting, such as balance, harmony, and the aesthetic oblique effect, also influence people’s judgments of aesthetic plating in much the same way. And while people undoubtedly do generally find larger portions of food more attractive, a number of the preferences that people have been demonstrated to exhibit appear to be “disinterested” (in the Kantian sense), thus qualifying them as genuinely aesthetic judgments. Recent chef/scientist collaborations that have started to deliberately elicit different kinds of affective responses from diners (such as, for example, surprise, “the aesthetic aha,” and perhaps even a sense of awe) are also discussed briefly. While questions concerning the cross-cultural generalizability of many of the findings summarized here remain (awaiting further research), progress is undoubtedly being made in this new and intriguing field of empirical aesthetics.

The General Impact of Context on Aesthetic Experience

This chapter discusses the general impact of context on the aesthetic experience. It is designed to anticipate the other chapters’ discussions of context’s specific areas—the social, the physical or institutional, information and framing, museums, background or personality-related features. Here, the authors offer a more general consideration discussing key aspects such as: What even is context? How can it best be thought about? What are the key issues that might be considered? And, especially, how can it be generally integrated into present knowledge of models of aesthetic processing experience? Beginning with the interest in context throughout the history of aesthetics, the chapter builds a presentation of empirical approaches and especially theory, focusing on context’s main layers and points of influence. It then discusses how key context issues might be considered in models of aesthetic processing, with the goal of providing a framework for better approaching context aspects in this book and in one’s own future studies. This is also interspersed with what the authors consider to be some of the more intriguing studies in order to spur readers’ thinking about the potential for studying context. The chapter concludes with some major issues, some candidates for future consideration, and suggestions for further reading and education.

The Audio-Visual Aesthetics of Music and Dance

Dance and music appear to belong together: Conventional definitions of dance often conceive it as a rhythmical activity in which a series of steps is performed to musical accompaniment. Indeed, dance and music share many similarities such as rhythm and may have co-evolved as a form of nonverbal communication between groups of people. Despite a rich history of composers and choreographers exploring the aesthetic relationship between dance and music, only a few scientific studies have systematically explored how the visual aesthetics of dance interact with the auditory aesthetics of sound and music. In this chapter we will focus on such interactions; we will explore the common evolutionary origins of dance and music and review existing research on how dance and music influence each other to produce an audio-visual aesthetics of sound and movement. The chapter will explore interactions in both directions: music influences dance perception by altering movement expressiveness, orienting visual attention, and by modulating memory. At the same time music perception strongly depends on groove and danceability and is shaped by the listener’s dance experience. The chapter closes with a review of methodological challenges to studying the audio-visual aesthetics of dance and music and suggestions for future research in this field.