Trait Appreciation of Beauty: A Story of Love, Transcendence, and Inquiry

Diessner, Rhett; Pohling, Rico; Stacy, Shawnee; Güsewell, Angelika

doi:10.1037/gpr0000166

Cited by 31 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 112 publications

(269 reference statements)

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“…We did not find a correlation between intense beauty and information-seeking here, i.e., wanting to understand the experience, learning, or interest, despite the prevalence of these notions in several psychological theories ( Armstrong & Detweiler-Bedell, 2008 ; Kivy, 1990 ; Reber et al, 2004 ). We did, however, find that several other features mentioned in contemporary literature are indeed correlated with beauty, such as the feeling that the experience exceeded expectation ( Salimpoor et al, 2015 ), harmoniously combined various elements ( Diessner et al, 2018 ), and meaningfulness ( Leder & Nadal, 2014 ).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 71%

“…The notion that a positive prediction error contributes to beauty ( Salimpoor et al, 2015 ) was also confirmed. Harmony in variety, the central beauty criterion in Diessner et al’s (2018) theory was associated with beauty, too, and so was meaningfulness (see Leder & Nadal, 2014 ). We found mixed results regarding Berlyne’s (1971) claims.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… Vessel et al (2013) identify the state of being moved as equivalent to what others call “beauty”. Diessner et al (2018) equate beauty with unity in variety, i.e., a feeling that the various elements of an object are harmoniously combined into a coherent whole. (This is similar to Wittgenstein’s (1938) description of “clicking or fitting” or “harmony” in aesthetic judgement.)…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Beauty, the feeling

2021

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Many philosophers and psychologists have made claims about what is felt in an experience of beauty. Here, we test how well these claims match the feelings that people report while looking at an image, or listening to music, or recalling a personal experience of beauty. We conducted ten experiments (total n = 851) spanning three nations (US, UK, and India). Across nations and modalities, top-rated beauty experiences are strongly characterized by six dimensions: intense pleasure, an impression of universality, the wish to continue the experience, exceeding expectation, perceived harmony in variety, and meaningfulness. Other frequently proposed beauty characteristics — like surprise, desire to understand, and mind wandering — are uncorrelated with feeling beauty. A typical remembered beautiful experience was active and social like a family holiday — hardly ever mentioning beauty — and only rarely mentioned art, unlike the academic emphasis, in aesthetics, on solitary viewing of art. Our survey aligns well with Kant and the psychological theories that emphasize pleasure, and reject theories that emphasize information seeking.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 71%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Beauty, the feeling

2021

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“…We did not find a correlation between intense beauty and informationseeking here, i.e., wanting to understand the experience, learning, or interest, despite the prevalence of these notions in several psychological theories (Armstrong & Detweiler-Bedell, 2008;Kivy, 1990;Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004). We did, however, find that several other features mentioned in contemporary literature were indeed correlated with beauty, such as the feeling that the experience exceeded expectation (Salimpoor et al, 2015), harmoniously combined various elements (Diessner et al, 2018), and meaningfulness (Leder et al, 2004).…”

Section: Supplementary Materialscontrasting

confidence: 73%

Beauty, the feeling

Brielmann

Nuzzo

Pelli

2020

Preprint

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Many philosophers and psychologists have made claims about the feelings in an experience of beauty. Here, we test how well these claims match the feelings that people report while looking at an image or listening to music that is beautiful to them, or recalling a personal experience of beauty. We conducted ten experiments (total n = 851) spanning three nations (US, UK, and India). Across nations and modalities, we find that top-rated beauty experiences are strongly characterized by six dimensions: intense pleasure, an impression of universality, the wish to continue the experience, perceived harmony in variety, exceeding expectation, and meaningfulness. Other frequently proposed beauty characteristics — like surprise, desire to understand, and mind wandering — are uncorrelated with feeling beauty. When explicitly asked, participants in all countries report that beauty is closely related to pleasure, found in nature rather than art, influenced by mood, and a form of communication. A remembered beautiful experience was typically active and social, like a family holiday, quite unlike the passive solitary appraisal of art emphasized in aesthetics. Our data align well with Kant (r = 0.74) and psychological theories that emphasize pleasure, and reject theories that emphasize information seeking. These six dimensions characterizing how individuals feel beauty emerge from the reports of hundreds of people seeing, hearing, or remembering something beautiful to them.

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“…Study 2 showed significantly higher prototypical and pleasing aesthetic emotions, and less negative aesthetic emotions were stimulated by a Werther's caramel candy compared with a control condition (an unflavored sugar cube); and 45% of participants found some beauty in the taste. In both studies the findings were unrelated to participants' levels of trait appreciation of beauty, as measured by the Engagement with Beauty Scale-Revised (EBS-R; Diessner, Pohling, Stacy, & Güsewell, 2018). In Study 3 we found that when the EBS-R predicted the response to an artwork, it did not predict gustatory beauty; and when the EBS-R predicted olfactory beauty, it did not predict the beauty of an artwork.…”

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confidence: 82%

Olfactory and gustatory beauty: Aesthetic emotions and trait appreciation of beauty.

Diessner¹,

Genthôs²,

Arthur³

et al. 2021

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

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Philosophers of aesthetics universally agree that visual and auditory stimuli may be considered beautiful. Divergently, controversy greets the question "Can olfactory or gustatory experiences be conceptualized as beautiful?" In Study 1 participants inhaled Joy® perfume applied to a cotton pad for 30 s and immediately completed the AESTHEMOS (Schindler et al., 2017), a scale measuring aesthetic emotions. Results indicated stronger prototypical (feeling of beauty and liking, fascination, being moved, and awe), pleasing (joy, humor, vitality, energy, and relaxation), and epistemic (surprise, interest, intellectual challenge, and insight) aesthetic emotions, and fewer negative aesthetic emotions (feeling of ugliness, boredom, confusion, anger, uneasiness, and sadness), were elicited by the perfume compared with a no-scent control condition. Results showed 36% of participants found some beauty in the perfume experience. Study 2 showed significantly higher prototypical and pleasing aesthetic emotions, and less negative aesthetic emotions were stimulated by a Werther's caramel candy compared with a control condition (an unflavored sugar cube); and 45% of participants found some beauty in the taste. In both studies the findings were unrelated to participants' levels of trait appreciation of beauty, as measured by the Engagement with Beauty Scale-Revised (EBS-R; Diessner, Pohling, Stacy, & Güsewell, 2018). In Study 3 we found that when the EBS-R predicted the response to an artwork, it did not predict gustatory beauty; and when the EBS-R predicted olfactory beauty, it did not predict the beauty of an artwork. Thus, the general trait of appreciating beauty, as measured by the EBS-R, may not extend to olfactory or gustatory beauty. The results are discussed in the context of philosophical approaches and empirical aesthetic research.

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Trait Appreciation of Beauty: A Story of Love, Transcendence, and Inquiry

Abstract: We thank Wendy Diessner and Heidi Simmons for feedback on an earlier draft.

Cited by 31 publications

References 112 publications

Beauty, the feeling

Beauty, the feeling

Beauty, the feeling

Olfactory and gustatory beauty: Aesthetic emotions and trait appreciation of beauty.

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