This research is framed within the study of automatic recognition of emotions in artworks, proposing a methodology to improve performance in detecting emotions when a network is trained with an ima...

The emotions that can be considered members of the set of Aesthetic Emotions (AEs) is controversial. The present study investigated the terms used by researchers in peer reviewed studies to exempli...

Embodied cognition claims that how we move our body is central for experience. Exploring dimensions of bodily engagement should, therefore, also be central for engaging art. However, little attenti...

Aesthetic appreciation of dance is associated with external components of physical features and audiences’ subjective aspects, which can be explained by cross-modal integration. In this study, we d...

Research on text analysis has demonstrated that texts can reveal various characteristics of individuals, such as personality, preferences, or future behavior. However, despite its numerous applicat...

In the context of rapidly developing technologies and widespread online access, it is important to understand how our perception of images on a computer screen may vary from traditional in-person e...

This study investigated whether there are any pathways by combining the five dimensions (i.e., naïve image, imagination, story, interestingness, artistry) of the painting with naïve and childlike i...

Innovation in arts and cultural sectors is an emerging study. Exploring and identifying driving factors of innovation by arts and cultural organizations can help to understand the implications for ...

This mixed-methods study focused on cross-modal change in perception of paintings, by coupling them with related musical pieces. 120 participants were assessed using an online form, distributed via...

The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of music classes conducted with the Kodály approach on the musical development of students. The research was carried out with the mixed method...

Raaga is the heart of Indian Classical Music. A raaga is an arrangement of 12 notes in the octave. Like Indian classical music, Sankari Sangeets which are composed 500 years ago are also based on r...

This study examined the effects of psychotic tendencies on aesthetic preferences for paintings. Although psychotic tendencies and related phenomena are often associated with creative achievements, ...

This study proposed that viewers’ experiential accounts of shedding tears in art museums in their blog narratives can help understand the distinctive characteristics of the tear-shedding experience...

Not only does the art market include human and nonhuman creators, it also incorporates technologically augmented artists, called cyborgs. They use wearables, sensors, chips, and even new organs to ...

Despite fashion being one of the most common and accessible aesthetic activities in everyday life, very few empirical studies of clothing selection and preferences exist. To address this empirical ...

To understand the relation between artistic reputation and sales prices from popular online auction sites, we analyzed over 3,000 online auction sales of 87 American artists who had expertise in wa...

The way in which platforms curate and assemble the music they present plays an important role in mediating fields of artistic practice to audiences. The different curatorial logics of platforms hel...

We employ a cognitive sociological perspective to empirically assess how the evaluation of music fragments – electronic dance music (EDM) in particular – is affected by the perceived attractiveness...

Recent years have witnessed a growth in women’s reading clubs on social media platforms such as Facebook. Using the theoretical framework of Interactive Therapeutic Process, this study examines the...

People visit art museums for many reasons—to see something beautiful or famous, to learn more about art, or to experience a sense of awe. Recently, there has been increased interest in how art muse...

Cultural activities might serve as a buffer to the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health. Frequencies of participants’ cultural activities in terms of participation in digital ...

Visual representation as a means of communication uses elements to build a narrative. We propose using computer analysis to perform a quantitative analysis of the elements used in the visual creati...

We report two pre-registered experiments investigating some of the conditions under which readers focus on aesthetically relevant object properties in text processing. Experiment 1 (N = 159) tested...

There is a long history of humans attempting to understand what drives aesthetic preference. One line of inquiry examines the effects of typicality and novelty on aesthetic responses to designed pr...

The relation between empathy and aesthetic experience has been stated early in empirical aesthetics. Aesthetic empathy means the ability to take the perspective of an artwork´s depicted content or ...

We are delighted to present the July 2022 issue of Empirical Studies of the Arts. We mark this new issue with a change in editorial team. Dr Marcos Nadal is stepping down as editor-in-chief after 5 years at the helm. Under his careful and considered guidance the journal has thrived and its reach has greatly increased, harnessing the growing international interest in empirical approaches to music, and

Conceptual information is central to the field of artistic photography. Nonetheless, there are very few studies on the matter. Therefore, we investigated whether artist's conceptual titles affected...

Lines contribute to the visual experience of drawings. People show a higher preference for curved than sharp angled lines. We studied preference for curvature using drawings of commonly-used objects drawn by design students. We also investigated the relationship of that preference with drawing preference. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed preference for the curved drawings in the laboratory and web-based

Although the aesthetic experience of popular illustrations is frequent in modern life, no scientific research can fully explain its psychological structure so far. This study aims to develop an aesthetic model of perception, affection, and cognition, presenting an aesthetic psychological framework for contemporary popular illustration. Thirty representative illustrations were selected as experimental

Considering all transactions related to modern and contemporary visual artists mediated by galleries in Italy between 2007 and 2012, we propose an empirical measure of artist brand and explore its relationship with artist-specific characteristics, such as talent, fame, and popularity, through a structural model. We find that artist brand depends positively on talent, fame, and popularity. Moreover

Music offers a useful opportunity to consider the factors contributing to the experience of curiosity in the context of dynamically changing stimuli. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the perception of change in music triggers curiosity as to how the heard music will unfold. Participants were presented with unfamiliar musical excerpts and asked to provide continuous ratings of their subjective experience

This study investigated whether the content of children’s drawings of an event changes over three successive interviews about that event. It also assessed whether children recall more details verbally than they draw. Twenty-seven 3- to 6-year old children witnessed a live event which ended with one actor stealing a cuddly toy. They were interviewed about it 1 day, 2 weeks, and 6 months later. At each

Aesthetic disposition has been defined as the propensity to prioritize form over function and to approach any object as potentially valuable from an aesthetic standpoint. In this study, we examined whether and how aesthetic disposition was predicted by educational capital, personality trait openness, and sex. In addition, we investigated the association of educational capital and sex with openness

People visit museums with differing motivations. We use Falk’s visitor identity model to examine visitors’ motivations to visit an art museum. We assess (1) the prevalence of different motivation types; (2) how visit motivations and outcomes relate to visit satisfaction and length; and (3) the relation between visit motivations and fulfillment of expectations. We found that (1) visitors most strongly

Previous research has shown that artists employ flexible attentional strategies during offline perceptual tasks. The current study explored visual processing online, by tracking the eye movements of artists and non-artists (n=65) while they produced representational drawings of photographic stimuli. The findings revealed that it is possible to differentiate artists from non-artists on the basis of

Western European and East Asian cultures show marked differences in aesthetic appreciation of the visual arts. East Asian aesthetics are often associated with a holistic focus on balance and harmony, in contrast to Western aesthetics, which often focus on the expression of the individual. In this study, we examined whether cultural differences also exist in relation to the aesthetics of dance. Japanese

In folk psychology experiences of ugliness are associated with the negation of beauty and disorder, but empirical evidence is remarkably rare. Here, participants (called informed) took 102 photographs of ugly landscapes and urban scenes and reflected on their experiences. Later, participants naïve to the intentional ugliness in the photographs rated landscapes higher than informed participants. The

This empirical study examines how philosophical work on the sublime relates to contemporary psychological work on awe. We operationalized several aspects of the sublime drawing from prominent philosophical theories and analyzed them in relation to three different measures of awe: the modified Differential Emotions Scale (mDES), the awe sub-scale of the Dispositional Positive Emotion Scale (DPES), and

Fractals are patterns that show self-similarity at different levels of scale. Typically they appear in nature and this degree of similarity is approximate or statistical. However, artificial or exact fractals have also been studied and the advantage of these stimuli is the ability to more carefully control the relationships that occur across various hierarchies. In two experiments we studied the perceived

This paper investigated the impact of the type of title on the price of the artwork effects using the hammer price of the paintings auctioned in Korea during a two-year period from December 2017 to November 2019. The results of the analysis showed that a descriptive title had a negative effect on the prices fetched, whereas a more elaborate title had a positive effect on auction prices. Also, it was

Artwork is increasingly being created by machines through algorithms with little or no input from humans. Yet, very little is known about people’s attitudes and evaluations of artwork generated by machines. The current study investigates (a) whether individuals are able to accurately differentiate human-made artwork from AI-generated artwork and (b) the role of attribution knowledge (i.e., information

The present study examined the effects of affective context on evaluation of facial expression of emotion in portrait paintings. Pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral context photographs were presented prior to target portrait paintings. The participants’ task was to view the portrait painting and choose an emotion label that fit the subject of the painting. The results from Experiment 1 indicated that

Poems, as aesthetic objects, generate a subjective experience, which can be different for different readers. In this paper, we propose a method to quantify these subjective experiences. We gave participants three parallel excerpts and asked them to describe, in free text, the perceived emotive qualities of these excerpts. The descriptions were analysed quantitatively according to the dimensions of

The factors influencing poetry’s aesthetic appreciation are largely unknown. Some studies have reported features that affect the aesthetic appreciation of poetry. This study sought to determine which states and traits predict the aesthetic appeal of haiku poetry. We recruited 277 participants to rate 36 haiku on five characteristics: imagery vividness, stimulus valence, arousal, valence of felt emotion

Given the ubiquity of art in almost all human societies, why is it that participation in the arts is so diverse? To address this question, the present study examined demographic and motivational variables as predictors of arts attendance in a sample of 480 participants, and whether any significant differences appear among attendees at different venues. The ordinal logistic regression identified income

Graffiti art is a controversial art form, and as such there has been little empirical work assessing its aesthetic value. A recent study examined image statistical properties of text-based artwork and revealed that images of text contain less global structure relative to fine detail compared to artworks. However, previous research did not include graffiti tags or murals, which reside in the space between

Intelligence is a key psychological feature associated to emotion and perception. Listening to music is often linked to emotional experience and sensation seeking (SS), traits that have been shown overall negatively correlated with intelligence. In a sample of 53 musicians and 54 non-musicians, we assessed the use of music for experiencing strong emotions through the Music in Mood Regulation (MMR)

In some creative domains, it is easy to make performance visible. For example, musician can be observed while they perform. In other domains, such as sculpting, less is known about the creation process. The objective of the present study was to analyze how professional artists and students in sculpting differ in their perception and in their creation processes as well as how perception and creation

In this study, we compared the psychological and psychophysiological benefits of coloring to drawing as a means of distraction versus expression. Participants were 60 undergraduates who experienced an anxiety induction. We then randomly assigned them to color a design, draw a design (distract), or draw to express their negative thoughts and feelings. Anxiety was measured before and after the anxiety

This article designs an empirical methodology to measure the perceived value of intangible cultural heritage, specifically using the significant example of flamenco. Such methodology is divided into three stages: interviews with experts, to lay out the flamenco creation process and to identify the aspects, which influenced its value; a double system survey for spectators and experts, which determines

Art-based programming has been proposed to be one of the most promising approaches for teaching creativity because it provides meaningful learning through a pleasurable activity. We describe a course for children that sought to increase both creativity skills (problem finding and idea generation) and emotion skills (abilities to perceive one’s emotions accurately, use one’s emotions to guide creative

Empirical aesthetics is associated with two research questions: How the mind generally assigns value to sensory stimuli and how it responds specifically to art objects. Researchers have debated whether these phenomena share enough to warrant being collapsed into a single field. To ask how these particular questions came to be associated with aesthetics, we conducted Google Ngram analyses over a corpus

Attention is drawn to the program of the Psychology of the Arts Conference held in Cardiff in 1983, which incorporated the eighth Congress of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics. A link is provided to the hitherto unpublished conference program. Three features of the program are highlighted: the strength of the psychology of music, the interest in children’s art, and the absence of

There is a long history of studies of shape preference using simple abstract two-dimensional shapes. The evidence has confirmed a preference for symmetry, high contrast, and smoothness over asymmetry, low contrast, and angularity. However, the evidence about the role of culture and expertise is inconclusive. We asked a group of 56 expert designers (studying at the IUAV) to draw seven objects on paper

This study investigated the need for uniqueness, visual aesthetic sensitivity, and their correlation. To investigate these variables, we asked 71 participants to complete the German adaptation of the Need for Uniqueness scale (NfU-G) and the Visual Aesthetic Sensitivity Test (VAST)—including the VAST-Revised (VAST-R). The NfU-G measures the need to set oneself apart from others, whereas the VAST(-R)

The idea of art as a language of emotion has historical roots. This study asked if color, as an integrated pictorial element in Himalayan art, can communicate the intended emotions to North American viewers. To investigate the extent to which those emotions are congruent cross-culturally, participants were assigned to four conditions of varying levels of informativeness, based on whether they did or

Art education includes activating two sources for developmental change. One resource that can be called upon to promote developmental change is external to the child, encouraged by teaching and by exposure to artworks. The other resource acts as a pacemaker internal to the child’s own cognitive development, facilitated by some conception of the minds of artists and viewers. Studies show how children

Art and metaphor both seem unnecessary for survival yet are unlikely to be spandrels given their ubiquity and apparent value. We discuss how art and metaphor play a similar, important role in cognition. Specifically, both are communications that are neither true nor false and so convey information by drawing attention to a limited isomorphism between target and source, a relationship that allows for

Although this article’s author and Ellen Winner completed their graduate training at Harvard’s now extinct Department of Psychology and Social Relations in the 1970s, they pursued divergent paths that only intersected on a few critical occasions, especially two discomfiting events during scientific meetings (the first event for her and the second for the author). Yet these distressing events stimulated

Gifted children are an extremely precious resource. But what does it mean to be gifted? Ellen Winner has devoted much of her career to addressing this question. In this essay, I argue that our society misdefines giftedness, placing undue emphasis on analytical skills. Moreover, the problem is getting worse. Amplifying factors in society are narrowing rather than broadening our definition of giftedness