Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts 
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This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.The benefits of drawing to regulate sadness and anger: Distraction versus expression.
This study compared the benefits of using drawing to regulate sadness and anger. Participants were 83 undergraduates who experienced a sadness or anger mood induction. After the mood induction, we randomly assigned participants to draw to distract or draw to express. Mood improvement and arousal were measured before and after the mood induction and after drawing. Finally, participants completed a flow and enjoyment questionnaire. Those in the draw to distract condition experienced greater mood improvement after drawing than those in the draw to express condition, regardless of emotion induced (sadness or anger). We found t...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - June 6, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Improvisational theater classes improve self-concept.
Claims are often made that classes in improvisational theater (improv) are beneficial to self-concept. However, empirical evidence supporting this assumption is scarce. The present study investigated the effect of improvisational theater classes on children’s self-concept. Fifty-two elementary schoolchildren participated in an experimental, repeated-measures, control group design. Children aged 8 to 11 enrolled in an afterschool program were randomly assigned to take improv classes or study hall, switching halfway through the academic year. Self-concept was tested 3 times (at the beginning, before the semester switch, an...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - May 30, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Review of How art works: A psychological exploration.
Reviews the book, How Art Works: A Psychological Exploration by Ellen Winner (see record 2018-55775-000). Weaving study after study from across the arts with her own extensive research and synthesis of the scholarship of the field, Winner has fashioned a masterful explanation of what we know about the mind and art, and how we know it as well. In How Art Works, Winner addresses the fundamental question of “What is art?” followed by a host of corollaries that have intrigued psychologists of aesthetics for over 100 years, including those that are of particular interest to the general public. This book is not the last word...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - May 27, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Olfactory and gustatory beauty: Aesthetic emotions and trait appreciation of beauty.
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 challe...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - May 27, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
From music making to affective well-being in everyday life: The mediating role of need satisfaction.
This study is the first to provide evidence for higher affective well-being of hobby musicians on days of music making. Results further suggest satisfaction of basic psychological needs as a mediating mechanism and emphasize the importance to distinguish between indicators of positive functioning (positive affect, need satisfaction) and negative functioning (negative affect, need dissatisfaction). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts)
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - May 20, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Correlation = causation? Music training, psychology, and neuroscience.
Although students in introductory psychology courses know that it is wrong to infer causation from correlation, scholars sometimes do so with impunity. The present study sought to test the hypothesis that the problem is systematic in studies of music training, and whether it may be attenuated or exacerbated among neuroscientists compared to behavioral psychologists. The sample comprised 114 journal articles published since 2000, each of which examined associations between music training and nonmusical behavior or brain structure and function. Articles were classified as neuroscience or psychology based on the method and/or...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - May 20, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
“Kneweth one who makes these notes . . .”: Personality, individual differences, and liking of nouveau roman and existentialist literature and film.
We examined associations between the Big Five personality traits with preferences (i.e., liking) for two nonconventional genres of film and literature, namely nouveau roman and existentialism, in samples of 548 nonexperts and 95 genre experts from Austria. Path analyses indicated that openness to experience (positively) and conscientiousness (negatively) were significantly associated with greater liking of stimuli across genres and media domains, after considering the effects of additional, relevant variables (aesthetic expertise and behaviors, social status, and the motive for sensory pleasure). Path models were stable ac...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - May 16, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Effect of dialogical appreciation based on visual thinking strategies on art-viewing strategies.
This study examines how educational interventions involving art viewing affect students’ art-viewing behaviors and their evaluations of artworks. We focused on Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), a typical intervention implemented in schools and museums, and examined its educational effect by comparing it to another common intervention: lectures on art history. To conduct this experiment, we recruited a sample of undergraduate students who were then assigned to a VTS condition or a lecture condition. The participants viewed 10 specific artworks both before and after receiving the educational intervention, and their eye mov...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - May 16, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Don't go with your gut: Exploring the role of motivation in aesthetic experiences.
The current study examined the impact of the need for cognitive closure, the motivation to engage in controlled processing, and perceptual fluency on aesthetic responses to abstract artwork. The study was done to further test Graf and Landwehr’s (2015) pleasure–interest model of aesthetic liking (PIA model), which assumes that an individual’s need for cognitive enrichment elicits controlled processing and increased interest in the stimulus. Participants’ need for cognitive closure was assessed, and they were given 1 of 3 task instructions that were thought to influence their motivation. In one condition, participan...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - May 16, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Contact improvisation dance practice predicts greater mu rhythm desynchronization during action observation.
Many studies have examined mu rhythm desynchronization (MRD) as an electroencephalographic (EEG) correlate of action simulation, including recent studies investigating how dance expertise enhances this effect. However, dance activities differ not only in their movement styles and repertoires but also in their methods and cognitive processes. The present study examines how practicing contact improvisation—a form of dance in which small groups use physical contact and transferred weight to fluently and jointly move together without choreography—predicts this effect independent of other kinds of dance practice. In line wi...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - May 2, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Creativity assessment in psychological research: (Re)setting the standards.
This commentary discusses common relevant themes that have been highlighted across contributions in this special issue on “Creativity Assessment: Pitfalls, Solutions, and Standards.” We first highlight the challenges of operationalizing creativity through the use of a range of measurement approaches that are simply not tapping into the same aspect of creativity. We then discuss pitfalls and challenges of the three most popular measurement methods employed in the field, namely divergent thinking tasks, product-based assessment using the consensual assessment techniques, and self-report methodology. Finally, we point to ...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - April 15, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Measuring creativity across cultures: Epistemological and methodological considerations.
This article offers some epistemological and methodological considerations on the topic of measuring creativity across cultures. It starts from reflecting on the key terms—creativity, culture, and measurement—and continues by proposing and illustrating three different types of “logic” that can underpin the cultural study of creativity. The logic of comparison focuses on standardization and comparability and is specific for most cross-cultural investigations. The logic of exploration highlights differences in creativity assessment between people and groups and focuses on their origins and dynamic, something specific...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - April 15, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Creativity assessment in neuroscience research.
We present a brief review of essential study design parameters in neuroscience research on creativity, including number of task repetitions (i.e., trials), time on task, what kind of responses are collected (e.g., whether participants speak, write, draw, press buttons), and when these responses are collected (e.g., after or during task). We further examine how design parameters depend on neuroscience methods (e.g., fMRI, EEG) and task type (e.g., divergent thinking, creative problem solving). The review discloses a substantial heterogeneity of methodological approaches across studies but also identifies some established co...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - April 15, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Ecological assessment in research on aesthetics, creativity, and the arts: Basic concepts, common questions, and gentle warnings.
Aesthetics, creativity, and arts researchers employ a variety of methods to answer their research questions. Ecological methods—assessing people in their everyday environments—are becoming more common, but researchers curious to try conducting a daily life study often find these methods complex and intimidating. Here, we provide a brief overview of ecological assessment techniques and how to go about using them. Specifically, we focus on what types of research questions are appropriate for ecological measurement, different ecological assessment designs, strategies for item development, suggestions for the nuts and bolt...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - April 15, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Measuring creativity change and development.
Creativity is not a static entity. It develops as people mature, and it can be trained and nurtured. Most applications of creativity research are in fact geared toward this end. However, the study of creativity as it changes and develops, whether under “natural” or “treatment” conditions (program effectiveness), faces a number of measurement and research-design challenges that have, thus far, greatly limited the conclusions that can possibly be made about this phenomenon. After a brief overview of research in this line of work, this review article emphasizes the enduring issues of practice effects, alternate-form r...
Source: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts - April 15, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
