Kirill Fayn

Aesthetic Emotions and Aesthetic People: Openness Predicts Sensitivity to Novelty in the Experiences of Interest and Pleasure.

There is a stable relationship between the Openness/Intellect domain of personality and aesthetic engagement. However, neither of these are simple constructs and while the relationship exists, process based evidence explaining the relationship is still lacking. This research sought to clarify the relationship by evaluating the influence of the Openness and Intellect aspects on several different aesthetic emotions. Two studies looked at the between- and within-person differences in arousal and the emotions of interest, pleasure and confusion in response to visual art. The results suggest that Openness, as opposed to Intellect, was predictive of greater arousal, interest and pleasure, while both aspects explained less confusion. Differences in Openness were associated with within-person emotion appraisal contingencies, particularly greater novelty-interest and novelty-pleasure relationships. Those higher in Openness were particularly influenced by novelty in artworks. For pleasure this relationship suggested a different qualitative structure of appraisals. The appraisal of novelty is part of the experience of pleasure for those high in Openness, but not those low in Openness. This research supports the utility of studying Openness and Intellect as separate aspects of the broad domain and clarifies the relationship between Openness and aesthetic states in terms of within-person appraisal processes.

Interested in Different Things or in Different Ways

Openness and intellect may differentially predict engagement for two possible reasons. First, engagement with sensory experiences is associated with openness, whereas engagement with abstract information is associated with intellect – a distinction based on content. Second, openness reflects affective, and intellect cognitive processing – a distinction based on affect. These two positions are contrasted through associations of both openness and intellect with interest in a broad range of stimuli. Participants (N = 191) viewed images of visual art, philosophical quotations, and scientific discoveries and rated them on interest, appraised novelty and understanding. Only openness predicted greater interest in all stimuli types. Appraised understanding mediated the openness-interest relationship for visual art and philosophy, while intellect was associated with greater appraised understanding of science and philosophy. Openness was associated with weaker understanding-interest relationships for visual art, and greater reactivity to novelty for science and philosophy. We conclude that one way to think of the engagement distinction between openness and intellect is in terms of emotional versus cognitive engagement. That is, the aspects reflect engagement in different ways rather than in different things.

Measuring child and adolescent emotional lability: How do questionnaire-based ratings relate to experienced and observed emotion in everyday life and experimental settings?

Emotional lability (EL) is an important trans‐diagnostic concept that is associated with significant functional impairment in childhood and adolescence. EL is typically measured with questionnaires, although little is known about the ecological validity of these ratings. In this paper, we undertook 2 studies addressing this issue by examining the relationship between rating‐based measures of EL and directly measured emotional expressions and experiences. Furthermore, the associations between directly measured emotional expressions and experiences and attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptomatology were also examined, given the clear association of EL with ADHD in former research.

Nuanced aesthetic emotions: emotion differentiation is related to knowledge of the arts and curiosity

ABSTRACT The ability to distinguish between emotions is considered indicative of well-being, but does emotion differentiation (ED) in an aesthetic context also reflect deeper and more knowledgeable aesthetic experiences? Here we examine whether positive and negative ED in response to artistic stimuli reflects higher fluency in an aesthetic domain. Particularly, we test whether knowledge of the arts and curiosity are associated with more fine-grained positive and negative aesthetic experiences. A sample of 214 people rated their positive and negative feelings in response to various artworks including positive and negative themes. Positive ED was associated with the embracing sub-trait of curiosity that reflects engagement and enjoyment of novelty and complexity, but was unrelated to artistic knowledge and perceived comprehension. Negative ED was associated with higher curiosity and particularly more knowledge of the arts. This relationship was mediated by appraised comprehension suggesting that deeper engagement with art, by those with more art knowledge, is associated with more fine-grained emotional experiences. This finding extends ED beyond well-being research and suggests that more nuanced emotional experiences are more likely for those with expertise in the arts and motivation for exploration.