Ten Years of a Model of Aesthetic Appreciation and Aesthetic Judgments
443 British Journal of Psychology (2014), 105, 443–464 © 2014 The British Psychological Society www.wileyonlinelibrary.com Ten years of a model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments: The aesthetic episode – Developments and challenges in empirical aesthetics Helmut Leder* and Marcos Nadal Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods, University of Vienna, Austria About a decade ago, psychology of the arts started to gain momentum owing to a number of drives: technological progress improved the conditions under which art could be studied in the laboratory, neuroscience discovered the arts as an area of interest, and new theories offered a more comprehensive look at aesthetic experiences. Ten years ago, Leder, Belke, Oeberst, and Augustin (2004) proposed a descriptive information-processing model of the components that integrate an aesthetic episode. This theory offered explanations for modern art’s large number of individualized styles, innovativeness, and for the diverse aestheticexperiences it canstimulate. In addition, it described how information is processed over the time course of an aesthetic episode, within and over perceptual, cognitive and emotional components. Here, we review the current state of the model, and its relation to the major topics in empirical aesthetics today, including the nature of aesthetic emotions, the role of context, and the neural and evolutionary foundations of art and aesthetics. Historical background Ten years ago, the British Journal of Psychology published a paper describing a new model of aesthetic experience of art (Leder, Belke, Oeberst, & Augustin, 2004). The model provided an integrative framework for empirical research and theoretical development. It grew out from the conviction that ‘Art, as any other activity of the mind, is subject to psychology, accessible to understanding, and needed for any comprehensive survey of mental functioning’ (Arnheim, 1966, p.
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