The art of feeling different: Exploring the diversity of emotions experienced during an art museum visit.

Abstract

The aesthetic experience of a group of artworks-such as an afternoon spent wandering in a museum-is not simply the sum of experiences of the individual works. In the present research, we explored visit-level aesthetic experiences in a field study of 298 visitors to a museum of modern and contemporary art. In particular, we focused on emotional diversity: the richness, complexity, and heterogeneity of the emotions that people experienced during their visit. After their visit, participants reported the degree to which they experienced, if at all, 10 emotions, from which we calculated diversity metrics reflecting their emotional variety (the number of emotions experienced) and emotional balance (the relative evenness between emotions or dominance of a single emotion) during the visit. Overall, the sample reported a rich aesthetic experience, but there was wide and predictable variability. Among other findings, emotional variety was higher for people with greater openness to experience and among first-time visitors to the museum; emotional balance was higher among people high in openness to experience and people with greater interest in art. The concept of diversity-the richness and complexity of someone's emotional experience of the arts-appears promising for understanding holistic aesthetic experiences, such as entire museum visits rather than single works, as well as for many other questions in empirical aesthetics.

Visual exploration mediates the influence of personal traits on responses to artworks in an art gallery setting.

“…The results add to an emerging literature on the role of individual differences in aesthetic evaluations (e.g., Chamorro-Premuzic et al, 2009;Fayn et al, 2015;Ostrofsky & Shobe, 2015) and emotional responses to artworks (Rodriguez et al, 2021). They do so by showing that visual exploration is a key mechanism through which individual differences exert an influence on aesthetic evaluation.…”

“…In summary, the present study shows that when participants view artworks in a gallery, dwell time is a mediating factor in the relationship between OTE and NFC and measures of aesthetic experience. The results add to an emerging literature on the role of individual differences in aesthetic evaluations (e.g., Chamorro-Premuzic et al, 2009; Fayn et al, 2015; Ostrofsky & Shobe, 2015) and emotional responses to artworks (Rodriguez et al, 2021). The current research suggests that studies investigating individual differences in aesthetic responses could usefully include measures of viewing behavior to more fully understand how different individual traits influence aesthetic outcomes.…”

“…Finally, OTE is known to be associated with breadth of experience of affective and emotional states (Terracciano et al, 2003). A recent study by Rodriguez et al (2021) reported that the emotional breadth of responses to artworks (viewed in a museum) was associated with OTE.…”

Virtual art visits: Examining the effects of slow looking on well-being in an online environment.

“…A common form of engaging with art is visiting an art museum (National Endowment for the Arts, 2013, 2018), with research increasingly examining the characteristics of art museum visits (e.g., Cotter et al, 2022; Rodriguez et al, 2021; Specker et al, 2017; Waszkielewicz, 2006). Research on art museums and flourishing has tended to focus on four domains—mental and physical health, subjective well-being and health, emotional well-being, and social connection (see Cotter & Pawelski, 2022 for review).…”

Guest editor's introduction April 2023.

“…We start the issue with three papers investigating aesthetic responses to music in a naturalistic concert setting. The dramatic growth of work in studying music during live concerts parallels trends in the broader field of neuroscience, in which researchers are beginning to investigate cognition and perception in a variety of naturalistic settings, such as art museums (Rodriguez et al, 2021), classrooms (Ishiguro et al, 2021), and movie theaters (Fröber & Thomaschke, 2021). The first contribution of this subsection focuses on self-reports and psychophysiological responses to music in a live concert setting (Merrill et al, 2023).…”