Arts and Humanities Engagement: An Integrative Conceptual Framework for Psychological Research

Abstract

From ancient times to the current digital era, the arts and humanities have been a significant part of human experience. They have played important roles in education, leisure, and work for people across diverse backgrounds and cultures, present in their lives from the cradle to the grave. This ubiquity of the arts and humanities in human life has also made them a topic of interest for psychologists. For more than a century, psychologists have conducted theoretical and empirical research on the psychological processes of engaging with art (Tinio & Smith, 2017). More recently, there has also been a call for a humanities approach to psychology that investigates human subjectivity (Teo, 2017). Furthermore, several divisions of the American Psychological Association such as the Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts (Division 10); the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (Division 24); the Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (Division 36) along with their accompanying peer-reviewed journals are devoted to the promotion of scholarship in this area. This indicates that both the arts and the humanities have substantive psychological significance in our lives. Despite this interest in the psychology of the arts and the humanities, however, our field lacks an integrative understanding of what it means to engage with the arts and humanities. Although psychological research has been undertaken on various forms of arts and humanities such as music, visual arts, literature, film, dance, and theater (Reiter-Palmon & Tinio, 2018; Smith & Tinio, 2014), this work is not grounded in a robust conceptualization of arts and humanities engagement as a whole. One of the core challenges to scientific progress in this area is the lack of a common language and an integrative conceptual framework that can be used across disciplines (Stickley et al., 2017). To better understand the psychological effects of engaging with the arts and humanities, we must first begin with a systematic and integrative approach to its conceptualization and operationalization (Tay, Pawelski, & Keith, 2018). Many scholars and organizations in the arts and humanities (e.g.

The Value of Active Arts Engagement on Health and Well-Being of Older Adults: A Nation-Wide Participatory Study

“…From the results of Method 1a and b, a conceptual framework was built (Supplemental III in Supplementary Materials), also using insights from the literature focusing on the value of arts and health [26][27][28][29][30][31] and the use of the concept of positive health [32] as a sensitizing concept [25] in constructing the framework. From this framework, a questionnaire for further quantitative framework analysis was built to identify patterns in the thick data considering the value of arts and health for older adults (Supplemental IV in Supplementary Materials).…”

Arts and Humanities Interventions for Flourishing in Healthy Adults: A Mixed Studies Systematic Review

“…Observation of artwork may promote reflectiveness, while art-making may activate mechanisms such as immersion and expressiveness. Although the effects of producing different visual arts (e.g., oil painting, drawing, sculpture) may be similar because they are free creations through physical media, different modes of engagement such as creating and observing, and whether these activities are done alone or together, could produce differential effects on flourishing outcomes (Shim et al, 2019). Future investigation that compares the effects of these different types of activities will aid in uncovering the mechanisms that lead to diverse PF effects.…”

“…Therefore, there is a need for more systematic integration of evidence on a broader range of domains and forms of engagement within the arts and humanities (Shim et al, 2019), along with a more balanced assessment of the full range of flourishing outcomes using a consistent conceptual framework (e.g., Tay et al, 2018). Furthermore, it is vital to go beyond the study of the therapeutic effectiveness of arts and humanities interventions of specific populations with certain clinical conditions to investigate their effectiveness on the flourishing of healthy populations.…”

Taking the Humanities Seriously

“…Similarly, Nussbaum (2010) describes the “spirit of the humanities” as “searching critical thought, daring imagination, empathic understanding of human experience of many different kinds” (p. 7). (Shim et al, 2019, p. 166)…”

“…We have seen this in the establishment of the "medical humanities" (e.g., Ahlzén, 2007;Chiapperino & Boniolo, 2014) and now in advocacy for the "psychological humanities," which include the arts (e.g., J. Martin, 2017;Shim et al, 2019;Teo, 2017Teo, , 2018 although here I focus more on the humanities as traditionally conceived in the academy. The view that the humanities can and should inform scientific psychology is hardly new (Koch, 1961(Koch, , 1969(Koch, , 1981).…”