PSYCHOLOGYDEPARTMENTAL SEMINAR

ALL WELCOMEThursday at 12.00 pm (Note unusual day and time)17 February 2011 Commerce 2.22 (Note unusual venue)

Psychological approaches to art appreciationProfessor Helmut Leder

Department of Psychological Basic Research University of Vienna

Helmut Leder is Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Head of the Department of Psychological Basic Research at the University of Vienna. His main fi elds of research are aesthetics, psychology of the arts, design – and face perception. His PhD is from the University of Fribourg. He was a visiting Researcher at the University of Stirling, ATR Japan, USC and UCSD, and at the Languages of Emotion-Cluster, FU Berlin. He is the author or co-author of over 100 scholarly publications and was awarded the Berlyne Award for career contributions to the psychology of aesthetics from the American Psychological Association.

Abstract: Art is a unique feature of human experience and several approaches aim to understand what the psychological aspects of this uniqueness are. Art appreciation involves the complex interplay among stimuli, perceiver and contexts, which have been discussed as eliciting a special combination of aesthetic judgments and aesthetic emotions. Based on our model of aesthetic appreciation (Leder et al., 2004), we conducted studies to understand the nature of stylistic processing (Augustin et al., 2008), the dependence of art appreciation of the class of artworks (Belke et al. in press) as well as the complex interplay of the variables involved between these factors. For the latt er, we conducted a study in which we measured diff erences in preferences for classical, abstract, and modern artworks (Leder et al., in press). Using structural equation modeling, we assessed the contribution of emotion, arousal, and comprehension as determining factors of art appreciation. The implications of these studies are discussed in respect to underlying theoretical foundations. Moreover, I will discuss what future research in light of these recent fi ndings seems warranted.

References:Augustin, M. D., Leder, H., Hutzler, F., & Carbon, C. C. (2008). Style follows content. On the microgenesis of art perception. Acta Psychologica, 128(1), 127-138.

Belke, B., Leder, H., Strobach, T., & Carbon, C. C. (in press). Cognitive fl uency: High-level processing dynamics in art appreciation. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.

Leder, H., Belke, B., Oeberst, A. & Augustin, D. (2004). A model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgements. British Journal of Psychology, 95, 489-508.

Leder, Gerger, Dressler, & Schabmann (in press). How art is appreciated. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.