What makes an art expert? Emotion and evaluation in art appreciation

Author(s)
Helmut Leder, Gernot Gerger, David Brieber, Norbert Schwarz
Abstract

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.

Organisation(s)
Vienna Cognitive Science Hub, Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology
External organisation(s)
University of Michigan
Journal
Cognition & Emotion
Volume
28
Pages
1137-1147
No. of pages
11
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2013.870132
Publication date
01-2014
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
501001 General psychology, 501006 Experimental psychology
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/what-makes-an-art-expert-emotion-and-evaluation-in-art-appreciation(19cbf750-f516-4ee3-9815-1ef96e46eec6).html