Why and How Should Cognitive Science Care about Aesthetics?
Authors: Eugen Wassiliwizky, Winfried Menninghaus
Journal: Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2021)

For more than two millennia, theoretical reflections on aesthetic perception and the creation of aesthetically appealing objects have been an important domain of humanist scholarship.Empirical aesthetics complements this tradition by adopting scientific methodology and providing evidence-based, reproducible answers to both longstanding and recently arisen questions.While empirical aesthetics has largely remained marginal since its foundation by Fechner in the mid-19th century, it is now about to be more broadly acknowledged as an important subfield of scientific research. Empirical aesthetics has found its way into mainstream cognitive science. Until now, most research has focused either on identifying the internal processes that underlie a perceiver's aesthetic experience or on identifying the stimulus features that lead to a specific type of aesthetic experience. To progress, empirical aesthetics must integrate these approaches into a unified paradigm that encourages researchers to think in terms of temporal dynamics and interactions between: (i) the stimulus and the perceiver; (ii) different systems within the perceiver; and (iii) different layers of the stimulus. At this critical moment, empirical aesthetics must also clearly identify and define its key concepts, sketch out its agenda, and specify its approach to grow into a coherent and distinct discipline. Empirical aesthetics has found its way into mainstream cognitive science. Until now, most research has focused either on identifying the internal processes that underlie a perceiver's aesthetic experience or on identifying the stimulus features that lead to a specific type of aesthetic experience. To progress, empirical aesthetics must integrate these approaches into a unified paradigm that encourages researchers to think in terms of temporal dynamics and interactions between: (i) the stimulus and the perceiver; (ii) different systems within the perceiver; and (iii) different layers of the stimulus. At this critical moment, empirical aesthetics must also clearly identify and define its key concepts, sketch out its agenda, and specify its approach to grow into a coherent and distinct discipline. Aesthetic processing has a profound impact on our everyday lives. It influences our choices regarding romantic partners, where we wish to live, how we dress, which objects we surround ourselves with, and the activities we pursue in our leisure time [1.Little A.C. et al.Facial attractiveness: evolutionary based research.Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. B Biol. Sci. 2011; 366: 1638-1659Crossref PubMed Scopus (482) Google Scholar, 2.Ritterfeld U. Cupchik G.C. 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Vorschule der Ästhetik [Preliminaries of Aesthetics]. Breitkopf und Härtel, 1876Google Scholar] and later by Berlyne [11.Berlyne D.E. Aesthetics and Psychobiology. Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971Google Scholar] – have not found any major, sustained representation at universities and are only now on the verge of becoming accepted as a mainstream field in the cognitive neurosciences. Over the past two decades, research in empirical aesthetics has been propelled strongly by advances in neuroscientific methods, giving rise to the subfield of neuroaesthetics (pioneering studies include [12.Blood A.J. et al.Emotional responses to pleasant and unpleasant music correlate with activity in paralimbic brain regions.Nat. Neurosci. 1999; 2: 382-387Crossref PubMed Scopus (729) Google Scholar, 13.Kawabata H. Zeki S. Neural correlates of beauty.J. 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Sci. 2007; 11: 197-203Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (585) Google Scholar]. At the same time, there is overall little agreement regarding the general conceptualization of empirical aesthetics as a distinct research field, the identification and definition of its key concepts, and a methodological framework for its future advancement. What actually is the agenda and what are the main goals of empirical aesthetics? Does it need novel constructs to describe specific phenomena? What characterizes aesthetic experiences (see Glossary)? Why is it important to study them, and how? This programmatic opinion article aims to provide conceptual clarity, a road map, and an integration of empirical aesthetics into a broader picture of the academic landscape. From an anthropological perspective, the ability to create artworks and artful decorations is well accepted as a defining feature of the human species, along with the use of complex symbolic communication systems, the formation of complex societies, and the manufacture of complex tools [19.Dissanayake E. Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why. Free Press, 1992Google Scholar, 20.Ingold T. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. Routledge, 2000Crossref Google Scholar, 21.McBrearty S. Brooks A.S. The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior.J. Hum. Evol. 2000; 39: 453-563Crossref PubMed Scopus (1700) Google Scholar, 22.Wadley L. et al.Implications for complex cognition from the hafting of tools with compound adhesives in the Middle Stone Age, South Africa.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 2009; 106: 9590-9594Crossref PubMed Scopus (305) Google Scholar, 23.d'Errico F. Stringer C.B. Evolution, revolution or saltation scenario for the emergence of modern cultures?.Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. B Biol. Sci. 2011; 366: 1060-1069Crossref PubMed Scopus (194) Google Scholar]. What remains subject to debate, however, is the age and origin of this ability, as well as its potential continuity with animal behaviors [23.d'Errico F. Stringer C.B. Evolution, revolution or saltation scenario for the emergence of modern cultures?.Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. B Biol. Sci. 2011; 366: 1060-1069Crossref PubMed Scopus (194) Google Scholar, 24.Ravignani A. Cook P.F. The evolutionary biology of dance without frills.Curr. Biol. 2016; 26: 878-879Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (19) Google Scholar, 25.Prum R.O. Coevolutionary aesthetics in human and biotic artworlds.Biol. Philos. 2013; 28: 811-832Crossref PubMed Scopus (22) Google Scholar]. According to the current state of knowledge, the oldest cave paintings produced by our species date back 44 000 years [26.Aubert M. et al.Earliest hunting scene in prehistoric art.Nature. 2019; 576: 442-445Crossref PubMed Scopus (68) Google Scholar], the first musical instruments 40 000 years [27.Conard N.J. et al.New flutes document the earliest musical tradition in southwestern Germany.Nature. 2009; 460: 737-740Crossref PubMed Scopus (269) Google Scholar], and the earliest body ornaments 100 000 years [28.Henshilwood C.S. et al.A 100,000-year-old ochre-processing workshop at Blombos Cave, South Africa.Science. 2011; 334: 219-222Crossref PubMed Scopus (351) Google Scholar,29.Vanhaeren M. et al.Thinking strings: additional evidence for personal ornament use in the Middle Stone Age at Blombos Cave, South Africa.J. Hum. Evol. 2013; 64: 500-517Crossref PubMed Scopus (151) Google Scholar]. Additionally, archeological records include elaborate decorations of everyday objects, such as engravings on arms or paintings on vessels, which do not modify the functional purpose of a given tool [30.Henshilwood C.S. et al.An abstract drawing from the 73,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa.Nature. 2018; 562: 115-118Crossref PubMed Scopus (96) Google Scholar,31.Joordens J.C. et al.Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving.Nature. 2015; 518: 228-231Crossref PubMed Scopus (196) Google Scholar]. Finally, ethnological research has reported refined practices of singing and dancing across a broad range of older and more recent cultures [32.Mehr S.A. et al.Form and function in human song.Curr. Biol. 2018; 28: 356-368Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (60) Google Scholar,33.Jacoby N. et al.Universal and non-universal features of musical pitch perception revealed by singing.Curr. Biol. 2019; 29: 3229-3243Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (32) Google Scholar]. In their entirety, these data support the assumption that the human senses and the human mind have evolved to be able to evaluate not just bodies, movements, vocalizations of conspecifics and other animals, landscapes, and other natural events, but also culturally produced objects and performances aesthetically (i.e., for their sensory and perceptual qualities). Such evaluation occurs additionally to, and sometimes regardless of, the pragmatic functions (e.g., demonstration of social status, mate choice, consolidation of group cohesion) that these objects and performances may serve, on top of providing inherent processing pleasure. First introduced by Baumgarten in 1735 [34.Baumgarten A.G. Reflections On Poetry: Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten's Meditationes Philosophicae de Nonnullis ad Poema Pertinentibus. University of California Press, 1735Google Scholar], the discipline of 'aesthetics' became widely accepted as a third branch of philosophy complementing the 'theoretical' and 'practical' branches. Rather than distinguishing true from false statements and moral from amoral acts/attitudes, this faculty of the mind was defined by its function to evaluate the phenomenal appearance of objects and performances on a number of qualitative dimensions (e.g., 'beautiful', 'sublime', 'grotesque'), with a special emphasis on the hedonic value of these perceptual qualities. Notwithstanding this initially broad framing, the general meaning of 'aesthetics' has over time been narrowed to apply exclusively to the fine arts and therein to the perceptual quality of 'beauty'. The legacy of this development, which we are still faced with today, prevents aesthetics from accounting for the richness and pervasiveness of aesthetic processing. To arrive at a comprehensive understanding of aesthetic processing it is, therefore, important to broaden our perspective beyond institutionalized artistic contexts of the modern era, such as concert halls and art galleries, and include stimulation from everyday objects, creatures, and natural phenomena. At the same time, it is equally important to study specific factors that an artistic context might introduce. Thus, it is a perennial question ever since Aristotle's Poetics [35.Aristotle Poetics. Hill & Wang, 1961Google Scholar] why we are fascinated by the depiction of a decaying corpse on a painting or the display of someone's suffering on stage, when both experiences would be highly undesirable if encountered in vivo. In a similar vein, why do we appreciate nonidiomatic, ambiguous, and difficult language use in poetry? Why do we enjoy the emotional ups and downs of a feature-length film? Why do we take pleasure in uncertainty in suspenseful narratives? These examples also illustrate that aesthetic experiences go far beyond beauty, which is only one dimension of aesthetic appreciation, and have distinct capacities to integrate negative emotions into an overall enjoyable affective response. Over the past 2500 years, important efforts have been made in the humanities to provide answers to such questions. Unsurprisingly, different scholars have proposed competing and sometimes contradictory explanations and predictions. As a result, the humanist tradition offers an abundance of explanatory models and testable hypotheses. The emergence of empirical aesthetics holds the promise of identifying which of these explanations and predictions are accurate as well as drafting entirely new models informed by the latest insights into human brain functioning. Thus, empirical aesthetics does not aim to replace traditional humanist disciplines but to facilitate collaboration between scientists, artists, and humanist scholars. The body of literature in empirical aesthetics can be assigned to two major categories: the subject-oriented and the stimulus-oriented approach, portrayed in Boxes 1 and 2, respectively.Box 1Subject-Oriented ApproachThe primary goal of this approach is to elucidate the general cognitive, emotional, and neurophysiological foundations underlying aesthetic experiences, including their structural and temporal organization in the brain, their subjective feeling (over time), and their functions in, and consequences for, our psychological lives. This approach is less concerned with how a stimulus elicits a specific aesthetic response. Rather, it focuses entirely on specific processes triggered in recipients. A prototypical example here is research on art-elicited chills. Usually, participants are asked to provide chill-eliciting stimuli (e.g., songs) of their own choosing [93.Salimpoor V.N. et al.Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music.Nat. Neurosci. 2011; 14: 257-262Crossref PubMed Scopus (875) Google Scholar, 94.Sumpf M. et al.Effects of aesthetic chills on a cardiac signature of emotionality.PLoS One. 2015; 10e0130117Crossref PubMed Scopus (38) Google Scholar, 95.Mas-Herrero E. et al.Modulating musical reward sensitivity up and down with transcranial magnetic stimulation.Nat. Hum. Behav. 2018; 2: 27-32Crossref PubMed Scopus (39) Google Scholar, 96.Ferreri L. et al.Dopamine modulates the reward experiences elicited by music.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 2019; 116: 3793-3798Crossref PubMed Scopus (87) Google Scholar].Figure I illustrates this approach with an elementary building block of a data set (i.e., a participant being exposed to a stimulus). One variable – here, button presses – is chosen to be the signal of interest (B). Therein, frames of interest (chill episodes) can be defined (vertical broken-lined rectangles) and contrasted with other frames of interest (e.g., time periods preceding chills, periods without chills). This framework can be further extended by having multiple signals of interest (e.g., subjectively felt chills indicated by button presses, goosebumps measured objectively by a video-recording device).Examination of the physiological and neural activity in these moments reveals the brain structures that orchestrate the anticipation and the experience of chills [47.Wassiliwizky E. et al.The emotional power of poetry: neural circuitry, psychophysiology and compositional principles.Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 2017; 12: 1229-1240Crossref PubMed Scopus (79) Google Scholar,93.Salimpoor V.N. et al.Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music.Nat. Neurosci. 2011; 14: 257-262Crossref PubMed Scopus (875) Google Scholar], their temporal choreography over time and interaction with other neural circuits [97.Salimpoor V.N. et al.Interactions between the nucleus accumbens and auditory cortices predict music reward value.Science. 2013; 340: 216-219Crossref PubMed Scopus (340) Google Scholar,98.Sachs M.E. et al.Brain connectivity reflects human aesthetic responses to music.Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 2016; 11: 884-891Crossref PubMed Scopus (72) Google Scholar], how the autonomic nervous system is involved [94.Sumpf M. et al.Effects of aesthetic chills on a cardiac signature of emotionality.PLoS One. 2015; 10e0130117Crossref PubMed Scopus (38) Google Scholar,99.Salimpoor V.N. et al.The rewarding aspects of music listening are related to degree of emotional arousal.PLoS One. 2009; 4e7487Crossref PubMed Scopus (331) Google Scholar, 100.Benedek M. Kaernbach C. Physiological correlates and emotional specificity of human piloerection.Biol. Psychol. 2011; 86: 320-329Crossref PubMed Scopus (103) Google Scholar, 101.Wassiliwizky E. et al.Tears falling on goosebumps: co-occurrence of emotional lacrimation and emotional piloerection indicates a psychophysiological climax in emotional arousal.Front. Psychol. 2017; 8: 41Crossref PubMed Scopus (54) Google Scholar], and how participants subjectively feel during these moments [101.Wassiliwizky E. et al.Tears falling on goosebumps: co-occurrence of emotional lacrimation and emotional piloerection indicates a psychophysiological climax in emotional arousal.Front. Psychol. 2017; 8: 41Crossref PubMed Scopus (54) Google Scholar,102.Zickfeld J.H. et al.Kama muta: conceptualizing and measuring the experience often labelled being moved across 19 nations and 15 languages.Emotion. 2019; 19: 402-424Crossref PubMed Scopus (55) Google Scholar].The search for general mechanisms underlying aesthetic experiences is complemented by the study of individual differences in aesthetic preferences and their systematic relation to other variables of the perceiver, such as personality dispositions, personal history, expertise, gender, educational/cultural background, and biological differences. This approach can be called 'differential empirical aesthetics'. Constructivist positions, as discussed in the main text, represent an extreme version of this strand, calling into question interindividually shared properties and lawful prediction of aesthetic experiences across individuals.Box 2Stimulus-Oriented ApproachThe stimulus-oriented approach focuses on the properties and elicitation mechanisms on the part of the stimulus that lead to specific effects in the recipient. The main question here is: how, or by virtue of which properties, is a specific effect elicited by a stimulus? An example of this is a study of the effects of parallelistic patterning in poetic language (i.e., repetitive structures; e.g., rhyme, meter) on the emotional processing and appreciation of recited poems [103.Menninghaus W. et al.The emotional and aesthetic powers of parallelistic diction.Poetics. 2017; 63: 47-59Crossref Scopus (43) Google Scholar]. Specifically, the main hypothesis predicted that a stepwise experimental removal of such parallelistic features from original poems – while maintaining their semantic contents – would reduce emotional involvement with, and the liking of, these different poem versions. Note that despite the focus on objective properties of specific stimuli (i.e., parallelistic patterns), stimulus-oriented research can readily include (average) rating responses from participants, as in this example.Stimulus-oriented research may also, however, focus entirely on stimulus analysis and/or historical data, as in the case of corpus studies for instance. To illustrate, in one study [104.Menninghaus W. et al.Poetic speech melody: a crucial link between music and language.PLoS One. 2018; 13e0205980Crossref PubMed Scopus (10) Google Scholar], an objective measure for the melodiousness of poetic language was developed (based on autocorrelations of sound sequences) and applied to a corpus of classical poems. The resulting objective melodiousness values were then used as predictors for the likelihood of a poem to be set to music by professional composers in subsequent times.The stimulus-oriented approach is illustrated in Figure I. The object of examination comprises the distinctive properties of a given stimulus. Depending on the domain, these properties will vary considerably, ranging from objectively measurable to psychologically informed variables. Here, the exemplary stimulus is a recited poem.Figure IStimulus-Oriented Approach.Show full captionThe exemplary stimulus is a recited poem with five illustrative property layers (A). Social address designates text passages in which one character is directly addressing another character (i.e., direct speech). Word valence represents the affective valence of single words, as indicated, for instance, by the Berlin Affective Word List [105.Sylvester T. et al.The Berlin Affective Word List for Children (kidBAWL): exploring processing of affective lexical semantics in the visual and auditory modalities.Front. Psychol. 2016; 7: 969Crossref PubMed Scopus (24) Google Scholar]. Self-similarity is a syllable-based index expressing parallelistic patterning in (poetic) language [103.Menninghaus W. et al.The emotional and aesthetic powers of parallelistic diction.Poetics. 2017; 63: 47-59Crossref Scopus (43) Google Scholar]. Word position is the relative position of words in five stanzas [47.Wassiliwizky E. et al.The emotional power of poetry: neural circuitry, psychophysiology and compositional principles.Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 2017; 12: 1229-1240Crossref PubMed Scopus (79) Google Scholar]. The oscillogram represents the sound parameters of the reciting voice; for example, the fundamental frequency F0 (i.e., pitch). Note that in the stimulus-oriented approach, measures obtained from perceivers (usually self-report ratings) can be incorporated (C). However, the signal of interest (B) is chosen from the list of stimulus properties, as the aim is to elucidate the working principles of the stimulus. Hence, in this example the correlates of direct speech passages (frames of interest designated by vertical broken-lined rectangles) are examined and can be compared with other passages. (D,E,F) represent stimulus-logged aggregated measures.View Large Image Figure ViewerDownload Hi-res image Download (PPT) The primary goal of this approach is to elucidate the general cognitive, emotional, and neurophysiological foundations underlying aesthetic experiences, including their structural and temporal organization in the brain, their subjective feeling (over time), and their functions in, and consequences for, our psychological lives. This approach is less concerned with how a stimulus elicits a specific aesthetic response. Rather, it focuses entirely on specific processes triggered in recipients. A prototypical example here is research on art-elicited chills. Usually, participants are asked to provide chill-eliciting stimuli (e.g., songs) of their own choosing [93.Salimpoor V.N. et al.Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music.Nat. Neurosci. 2011; 14: 257-262Crossref PubMed Scopus (875) Google Scholar, 94.Sumpf M. et al.Effects of aesthetic chills on a cardiac signature of emotionality.PLoS One. 2015; 10e0130117Crossref PubMed Scopus (38) Google Scholar, 95.Mas-Herrero E. et al.Modulating musical reward sensitivity up and down with transcranial magnetic stimulation.Nat. Hum. Behav. 2018; 2: 27-32Crossref PubMed Scopus (39) Google Scholar, 96.Ferreri L. et al.Dopamine modulates the reward experiences elicited by music.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 2019; 116: 3793-3798Crossref PubMed Scopus (87) Google Scholar]. Figure I illustrates this approach with an elementary building block of a data set (i.e., a participant being exposed to a stimulus). One variable – here, button presses – is chosen to be the signal of interest (B). Therein, frames of interest (chill episodes) can be defined (vertical broken-lined rectangles) and contrasted with other frames of interest (e.g., time periods preceding chills, periods without chills). This framework can be further extended by having multiple signals of interest (e.g., subjectively felt chills indicated by button presses, goosebumps measured objectively by a video-recording device). Examination of the physiological and neural activity in these moments reveals the brain structures that orchestrate the anticipation and the experience of chills [47.Wassiliwizky E. et al.The emotional power of poetry: neural circuitry, psychophysiology and compositional principles.Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 2017; 12: 1229-1240Crossref PubMed Scopus (79) Google Scholar,93.Salimpoor V.N. et al.Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music.Nat. Neurosci. 2011; 14: 257-262Crossref PubMed Scopus (875) Google Scholar], their temporal choreography over time and interaction with other neural circuits [97.Salimpoor V.N. et al.Interactions between the nucleus accumbens and auditory cortices predict music reward value.Science. 2013; 340: 216-219Crossref PubMed Scopus (340) Google Scholar,98.Sachs M.E. et al.Brain connectivity reflects human aesthetic responses to music.Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 2016; 11: 884-891Crossref PubMed Scopus (72) Google Scholar], how the autonomic nervous system is involved [94.Sumpf M. et al.Effects of aesthetic chills on a cardiac signature of emotionality.PLoS One. 2015; 10e0130117Crossref PubMed Scopus (38) Google Scholar,99.Salimpoor V.N. et al.The rewarding aspects of music listening are related to degree of emotional arousal.PLoS One. 2009; 4e7487Crossref PubMed Scopus (331) Google Scholar, 100.Benedek M. Kaernbach C. Physiological correlates and emotional specificity of human piloerection.Biol. Psychol. 2011; 86: 320-329Crossref PubMed Scopus (103) Google Scholar, 101.Wassiliwizky E. et al.Tears falling on goosebumps: co-occurrence of emotional lacrimation and emotional piloerection indicates a psychophysiological climax in emotional arousal.Front. Psychol. 2017; 8: 41Crossref PubMed Scopus (54) Google Scholar], and how participants subjectively feel during these moments [101.Wassiliwizky E. et al.Tears falling on goosebumps: co-occurrence of emotional lacrimation and emotional piloerection indicates a psychophysiological climax in emotional arousal.Front. Psychol. 2017; 8: 41Crossref PubMed Scopus (54) Google Scholar,102.Zickfeld J.H. et al.Kama muta: conceptualizing and measuring the experience often labelled being moved across 19 nations and 15 languages.Emotion. 2019; 19: 402-424Crossref PubMed Scopus (55) Google Scholar]. The search for general mechanisms underlying aesthetic experiences is complemented by the study of individual differences in aesthetic preferences and their systematic relation to other variables of the perceiver, such as personality dispositions, personal history, expertise, gender, educational/cultural background, and biological differences. This approach can be called 'differential empirical aesthetics'. Constructivist positions, as discussed in the main text, represent an extreme version of this strand, calling into question interindividually shared properties and lawful prediction of aesthetic experiences across individuals. The stimulus-oriented approach focuses on the properties and elicitation mechanisms on the part of the stimulus that lead to specific effects in the recipient. The main question here is: how, or by virtue of which properties, is a specific effect elicited by a stimulus? An example of this is a study of the effects of parallelistic patterning in poetic language (i.e., repetitive structures; e.g., rhyme, meter) on the emotional processing and appreciation of recited poems [103.Menninghaus W. et al.The emotional and aesthetic powers of parallelistic diction.Poetics. 2017; 63: 47-59Crossref Scopus (43) Google Scholar]. Specifically, the main hypothesis predicted that a stepwise experimental removal of such parallelistic features from original poems – while maintaining their semantic contents – would reduce emotional involvement with, and the liking of, these different poem versions. Note that despite the focus on objective properties of specific stimuli (i.e., parallelisti