Aesthetics

Brielmann, Aenne; Pelli, Denis G.

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2018.06.004

Cited by 55 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…An alternate interpretation is that beauty and pleasure are merely two judgments based on the same hedonic intensity and might differ solely in their thresholds, with a higher threshold for “beautiful” than for likable or pleasurable. Previous findings have suggested such a threshold mechanism (Brielmann and Pelli, 2017, 2018). It remains for future research on beauty to clarify whether or not beauty and pleasure experiences rely on the same hedonic intensity or separate albeit closely related ones.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…Beauty has fascinated humankind since ancient times, before Homer (see e.g., Hofstader and Kuhns, 1976), and was one of the first phenomena investigated in experimental psychology (e.g., Fechner, 1876; Lipps, 1906). In common understanding, the concept of beauty is central to aesthetics (Jacobsen et al, 2004; Brielmann and Pelli, 2018; Menninghaus et al, 2019a). Yet, beauty remains a controversial concept as the neuroaesthetics literature has yet to agree on a clear consistent definition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While some research suggests that the key difference between beauty and other pleasures lies in the involvement of cognitive factors (e.g., Brielmann and Pelli, 2017; Skov, 2019a, b), a bolder viewpoint is that Valentine was wrong. People do call candy beautiful if they experience above-threshold pleasure from it (Brielmann and Pelli, 2017), provoking the hypothesis that any above-threshold pleasure qualifies as a beauty experience (Brielmann and Pelli, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Intense Beauty Requires Intense Pleasure

Brielmann

Pelli

2019

Front. Psychol.

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At the beginning of psychology, Fechner (1876) claimed that beauty is immediate pleasure, and that an object's pleasure determines its value. In our earlier work, we found that intense pleasure always results in intense beauty. Here, we focus on the inverse: Is intense pleasure necessary for intense beauty? If so, the inability to experience pleasure (anhedonia) should prevent the experience of intense beauty. We asked 757 online participants to rate how intensely they felt beauty from each image. We used 900 OASIS images along with their available valence (pleasure vs. displeasure) and arousal ratings. We then obtained self-reports of anhedonia (TEPS), mood, and depression (PHQ-9). Across images, beauty ratings were closely related to pleasure ratings (r = 0.75), yet unrelated to arousal ratings. Only images with an average pleasure rating above 4 (of a possible 7) often achieved (>10%) beauty averages exceeding the overall median beauty. For normally beautiful images (average rating > 4.5), the beauty ratings were correlated with anhedonia (r ∼ −0.3) and mood (r ∼ 0.3), yet unrelated to depression. Comparing each participant's average beauty rating to the overall median (5.0), none of the most anhedonic participants exceeded the median, whereas 50% of the remaining participants did. Thus, both general and anhedonic results support the claim that intense beauty requires intense pleasure. In addition, follow-up repeated measures showed that shared taste contributed 19% to beauty-rating variance, only one third as much as personal taste (58%). Addressing age-old questions, these results indicate that beauty is a kind of pleasure, and that beauty is more personal than universal, i.e., 1.7 times more correlated with individual than with shared taste.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Intense Beauty Requires Intense Pleasure

Brielmann

Pelli

2019

Front. Psychol.

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“…As a new field, it is still struggling with honing in on the best methods and technologies. While many studies have focused on measuring explicit statements of “liking” or beauty (Brielmann & Pelli, 2017, 2018; Fechner, 1876; Leder & Nadal, 2014), we introduced here an interactive approach to study how observers perceive the color and spatial composition of abstract artworks (for other examples of interactive tasks, see also Koenderink, van Doorn, & Wagemans, 2017; Nascimento et al., 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kandinsky or Me? How Free Is the Eye of the Beholder in Abstract Art?

Braun

Doerschner

2019

i-Perception

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We investigated in “art-naïve” German and Chinese participants the perception of color and spatial balance in abstract art. For color perception, we asked participants (a) to adjust the color of a single element in 24 paintings according to their liking and (b) to indicate whether they preferred their version of the painting or the original. For spatial perception, we asked participants (a) to determine the “balance point” of an artwork and (b) to indicate their preferences for the original or left-right reversed orientation of previously seen and unfamiliar paintings. Results of the color experiments suggest that, even though the interactive task was of a rather open-ended nature, observers’ color adjustments were not random but systematically influenced by each painting’s color palette. Overall, participants liked their own color choices about as much as the original composition. Results of the spatial experiments reveal a remarkable consistency between participants in their balance point settings. The perceived lateral position of the balance point systematically affected the left-right orientation preference for a given painting. We conclude that “art-naïve” observers are sensitive to the composition of colors and spatial structures in abstract art and are influenced by their cultural backgrounds when experiencing abstract paintings.

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“…Thus, the two images were at symmetric eccentricities in the left and right periphery of the observer's vision, avoiding greater attention to one image closer to the center of fixation. Subjectively felt pleasure from an image is reported reliably after presentation durations as short as 50 ms (e.g., Brielmann & Pelli, 2018;Forster, Leder, & Ansorge, 2016;Schwabe, Menzel, Mullin, Wagemans, & Redies, 2018).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracking two pleasures

Brielmann

Pelli

2020

Psychon Bull Rev

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Can people track several pleasures? In everyday life, pleasing stimuli rarely appear in isolation. Yet, experiments on aesthetic pleasure usually present only one image at a time. Here, we ask whether people can reliably report the pleasure of either of two images seen in a single glimpse. Participants (N = 13 in the original; +25 in the preregistered replication) viewed 36 Open Affective Standardized Image Set (OASIS) images that span the entire range of pleasure and beauty. On each trial, the observer saw two images, side by side, for 200 ms. An arrow cue pointed, randomly, left, right, or bidirectionally. Left or right indicated which image (the target) to rate while ignoring the other (the distractor); bidirectional requested rating the combined pleasure of both images. In half the blocks, the cue came before the images (precuing). Otherwise, it came after (postcuing). Precuing allowed the observer to ignore the distractor, while postcuing demanded tracking both images. Finally, we obtained single-pleasure ratings for each image shown alone. Our replication confirms the original study. People have unbiased access to their felt pleasure from each image and the average of both. Furthermore, the variance of the observer's report is similar whether reporting the pleasure of one image or the average pleasure of two. The undiminished variance for reports of the average pleasure of two images indicates either that the underlying pleasure variances are highly correlated, or, more likely, that the variance arises in the common reporting process. In brief, observers can faithfully track at least two visual pleasures.

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Aesthetics

Cited by 55 publications

References 12 publications

Intense Beauty Requires Intense Pleasure

Intense Beauty Requires Intense Pleasure

Kandinsky or Me? How Free Is the Eye of the Beholder in Abstract Art?

Tracking two pleasures

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