Frontiers in Psychology
Frontiers in Psychology
4 years ago

The Ambiguity of Artworks -A Guideline for Empirical Aesthetics Research with Artworks as Stimuli.

Gregor U Hayn-Leichsenring
The aim of this work is to provide researchers from the field of aesthetics with a guideline on working with artworks as stimuli. Empirical aesthetics research is complicated by the uncertainty of the object of research. There is no way to unquestionably tell whether an object is an artwork or not. However, although the extension of the term artwork (i.e., the range of objects to which this concept applies) remains vague, the different intensions of the term artwork (i.e., the internal concept that constitutes a formal definition) are well defined. Here, I review the various concepts of artworks (i.e., intensions) that scientists from different fields use in current research in empirical aesthetics. The selection of stimuli is often not explained and/or does not match the focus of the study. An application of two or more intensions within one study leads to an indeterminacy of the stimuli and, thus, to systematic problems concerning the interpretation and comparability of the experimental results. Based on these intensions and the Pleasure-Interest Model of Aesthetic Liking (Graf and Landwehr, 2015), I compiled a decision tree in order to provide researchers with an instrument that allows a better control over their stimuli.

Publisher URL: http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01857

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01857

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.