Mapping the conceptual domain of aesthetic emotion terms: A pile-sort study.

Abstract

Aesthetic evaluations are often couched in terms of emotional impact; for example, an artwork may be deemed fascinating, moving, or surprising. Such emotional responses have been called “aesthetic emotions.” Given the broad variety of terms used to conceptualize emotional reactions to art and to other elicitors of aesthetic responses, the authors performed an exploratory study aimed at mapping the conceptual domain of such terms by using a pile-sort task. Seventy-five items designating emotional reactions during aesthetic experiences were derived from the literature. Sixty students of the arts and related disciplines sorted the items into piles as determined by judged similarity. The authors used cluster and network analyses to draw up a highly granular conceptual map of the selected emotion terms. This map offers new information on the categorization and strength of associations between emotion terms that helps inform future conceptualizations and measures of specific aesthetic emotions. The analyses further revealed that complex and mixed emotional experiences of captivation, enchantment, and cognitive engagement are differentiated from emotions with purely negative or positive valence early on. The former emotions, which are regarded as typical of aesthetic experience, were found to lie at the heart of the conceptual domain of aesthetic emotion terms.

Measuring aesthetic emotions: A review of the literature and a new assessment tool

“…This decision is supported by the findings of [183] that happiness is clearly distinct from humor. Moreover, prior studies have revealed that, while positive emotions are in general less distinct from one another than negative emotions [155], there are important differences between joy and amusement [184].…”

“…In particular, we considered a study [183] on the conceptual space of the aesthetic emotion terms that were also included in the present study.…”

“…As these two items were also conceptually closely related [183], we combined the feelings of sublimity and awe to form the awe scale.…”

“…The study by Hosoya and colleagues [183] further showed that people clearly distinguish between terms designating insight and terms designating intellectual challenge.…”

Toward an Integrative Psychometric Model of Emotions

“…Furthermore, these approaches were entirely theoretical and could therefore not be applied as psychometric models of emotions. Finally, emotions were assessed as part of networks in psychopathology research (e.g., Bringmann et al, 2016;Pe et al, 2015;Van de Leemput et al, 2014), attitudes (Dalege et al, 2016(Dalege et al, , 2017, aesthetics (Hosoya et al, 2017), and personality (e.g., Pavani, Le Vigouroux, Kop, Congard, & Dauvier, 2017), and mixed emotions were investigated with the help of co-occurrence networks of emotions (e.g., Moeller, Ivcevic, Brackett, & White, 2018). However, in these studies, emotions were treated as single variables and not conceptualized via the causal interaction of multiple emotion components as we propose.…”