Neuroscience of aesthetics Chatterjee, Anjan; Vartanian, Oshin
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,
April 2016, Letnik:
1369, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Aesthetic evaluations are appraisals that influence choices in important domains of human activity, including mate selection, consumer behavior, art appreciation, and possibly even moral judgment. ...The nascent field of neuroaesthetics is advancing our understanding of the role of aesthetic evaluations by examining their biological bases. Here, we conduct a selective review of the literature on neuroaesthetics to demonstrate that aesthetic experiences likely emerge from the interaction between emotion–valuation, sensory–motor, and meaning–knowledge neural systems. This tripartite model can in turn be evoked to explain phenomena central to aesthetics, such as context effects on preferences. Indeed, context‐dependent appraisals that focus on objects rather than on outcomes could be an important factor distinguishing aesthetic experiences from other kinds of evaluations.
What kinds of impacts can visual art have on a viewer? To identify potential art impacts, we recruited five aesthetics experts from different academic disciplines: art history, neuroscience, ...philosophy, psychology and theology. Together, the group curated a set of terms that corresponded to descriptive features (124 terms) and cognitive‐affective impacts (69 terms) of artworks. Using these terms as prompts, participants (n = 899) were given one minute to generate words for each term related to how an artwork looked (descriptive features) or made them think or feel (cognitive‐affective impacts). Using network psychometric approaches, we identified terms that were semantically similar based on participants' responses and applied hierarchical exploratory graph analysis to map the relationships between the terms. Our analyses identified 17 descriptive dimensions, which could be further reduced to 5, and 11 impact dimensions, which could be further reduced to 4. The resulting taxonomy demonstrated overlap between the descriptive and impact networks as well as consistency with empirical evidence. This taxonomy could serve as the foundation to empirically evaluate art's impacts on viewers.
Objective
The objective of the study was to assess nasolabial aesthetics in patients with complete unilateral cleft lip, with or without cleft palate (UCL ± P) using two scoring systems.
Design
A ...cross‐sectional study conducted in a tertiary care government hospital.
Patients
Photographic records of 91 patients with complete UCL ± P from the age group of 5–18 years (mean age = 13.2 ± 3.14 years) were included.
Method
A panel of three orthodontists with varying experience in cleft management rated nasolabial aesthetics using two scoring systems, that is Asher Mc‐Dade index (AMAI) and Cleft Aesthetic Rating Scale (CARS). Intraclass correlation coefficient, Fleiss' kappa and Cronbach's alpha were used to measure the internal consistency amongst three raters and Spearman–Brown formula was used for measuring overall reliability. Time required for assessment of each photograph was compared with ANOVA.
Results
Overall, both AMAI and CARS showed high reliability and outcome assessment with good inter‐rater reliability and internal consistency, when used independently by orthodontists having varied experience. Statistically significant difference was present in time taken for assessment of nasolabial aesthetics with CARS index (8.75 ± 1.65 seconds) as compared to AMAI (18.62 ± 3.49 seconds).
Conclusion
Asher Mc‐Dade index and CARS are equally reliable and consistent for the assessment of nasolabial aesthetics in patients with UCL ± P. However, considerably less time was taken for the assessment using CARS index as compared to AMAI. The use of CARS index is recommended for the initial assessment and screening of patients by orthodontists using two dimensional photographs.
Why do some people like negative, or even disgusting and provocative artworks? Art expertise, believed to influence the interplay among cognitive and emotional processing underlying aesthetic ...experience, could be the answer. We studied how art expertise modulates the effect of positive-and negative-valenced artworks on aesthetic and emotional responses, measured with self-reports and facial electromyography (EMG). Unsurprisingly, emotionally-valenced art evoked coherent valence as well as corrugator supercilii and zygamoticus major activations. However, compared to non-experts, experts showed attenuated reactions, with less extreme valence ratings and corrugator supercilii activations and they liked negative art more. This pattern was also observed for a control set of International Affective Picture System (IAPS) pictures suggesting that art experts show general processing differences for visual stimuli. Thus, much in line with the Kantian notion that an aesthetic stance is emotionally distanced, art experts exhibited a distinct pattern of attenuated emotional responses.
Research seeking a scientific foundation for the theory of art appreciation has raised controversies at the intersection of the social and cognitive sciences. Though equally relevant to a scientific ...inquiry into art appreciation, psychological and historical approaches to art developed independently and lack a common core of theoretical principles. Historicists argue that psychological and brain sciences ignore the fact that artworks are artifacts produced and appreciated in the context of unique historical situations and artistic intentions. After revealing flaws in the psychological approach, we introduce a psycho-historical framework for the science of art appreciation. This framework demonstrates that a science of art appreciation must investigate how appreciators process causal and historical information to classify and explain their psychological responses to art. Expanding on research about the cognition of artifacts, we identify three modes of appreciation: basic exposure to an artwork, the artistic design stance, and artistic understanding. The artistic design stance, a requisite for artistic understanding, is an attitude whereby appreciators develop their sensitivity to art-historical contexts by means of inquiries into the making, authorship, and functions of artworks. We defend and illustrate the psycho-historical framework with an analysis of existing studies on art appreciation in empirical aesthetics. Finally, we argue that the fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure can be amended to meet the requirements of the framework. We conclude that scientists can tackle fundamental questions about the nature and appreciation of art within the psycho-historical framework.
The increasing number of esthetic procedures emphasizes the need for effective evaluation methods of outcomes. Current practices include the individual practitioners' judgment in conjunction with ...standardized scales, often relying on the comparison of before and after photographs. This study investigates whether comparative evaluations influence the perception of beauty and aims to enhance the accuracy of esthetic assessments in clinical and research settings.
To compare the evaluation of attractiveness and gender characteristics of faces in group-based versus individual ratings.
A sample of 727 volunteers (average age of 29.5 years) assessed 40 facial photographs (20 male, 20 female) for attractiveness, masculinity, and femininity using a 5-point Likert scale. Each face was digitally edited to display varying ratios in four lip-related proportions: vertical lip position, lip width, upper lip esthetics, and lower lip esthetics. Participants rated these images both in an image series (group-based) and individually.
Differences in the perception of the most attractive/masculine/feminine ratios for each lip proportion were found in both the group-based and individual ratings. Group ratings exhibited a significant central tendency bias, with a preference for more average outcomes compared with individual ratings, with an average difference of 0.50 versus 1.00. (p = 0.033)
A central tendency bias was noted in evaluations of attractiveness, masculinity, and femininity in group-based image presentation, indicating a bias toward more “average” features. Conversely, individual assessments displayed a preference for more pronounced, “non-average” appearances, thereby possibly pointing toward a malleable "intrinsic esthetic blueprint" shaped by comparative context.
Dance has entered mainstream empirical research: dance as an experimental stimulus, and dancers as movement experts. Informed by several sources, including primary sources (original, historical ...documents, and oral reports, such as interviews with practitioners and academic scholars of Iranian dance genres) and secondary sources (research literature), we describe what we label “Iranian classical dance” within this paper as an important resource for empirical research, not only in humanities scholarship but also, and importantly, for empirical aesthetics, emotion psychology, cross‐cultural psychology, and affective neuroscience. For this purpose, we (1) describe the aesthetics, characteristics, and history of Iranian classical dance; (2) outline issues of definition and systematization; and (3) give an overview of the cultural complexities and sociopolitical issues regarding Iranian classical dance in the past 40 years, which have shaped its current form. After the political revolution of 1979 (Iranian solar calendar year: 1358), dance in Iran—both as everyday practice and as a cultural heritage—was first forbidden, and now remains heavily restricted. International, interdisciplinary research teams can contribute to safeguarding Iranian classical dance in the future by firmly enshrining it into empirical research on human dance. We outline empirical research perspectives on Iranian classical dance, dataset resources, and expert communities.
Iranian classical dance is a rich resource for academic research, both for humanities scholarship and for the empirical disciplines (e.g., empirical aesthetics, experimental psychology, affective neuroscience). To support such research, this paper (a) describes the aesthetics, characteristics, and history of Iranian classical dance; (b) outlines issues of definition and systematization; and (c) gives an overview of related cultural complexities and sociopolitical issues in the past 40 years.
In the psychology of aesthetics, compared with appreciation, there are fewer studies on art creation. This study aims to examine the influence of art creation on appreciation using haiku poetry with ...reference to the Mirror Model—a process model combining creation and appreciation. Although the model has been primarily used to examine visual arts, we examine its applicability to linguistic arts. In addition, we use ink painting to examine whether a generalisation across artistic genres can occur. The 115 participants were divided into two conditions—creation and control. The former created haiku before and after appreciation, while the latter did not create any haiku. The results showed no improvement in evaluation through creation. Additionally, recognising the difficulty related to creation leads to aesthetic evaluation, and this relationship is mediated by awe. These results expand the existing information regarding the Mirror Model in terms of the different art genres.
