Psychological context of aesthetic experiences: An exploration of memorable art appreciation events

There is a long history of psychological research on the hedonic value and intrinsic motivation for art appreciation. Typically, research has focused on fitting art appreciation in preconceived models and has overlooked viewers' subjective experiences. Previous studies have also focused mainly on the exact moment of interaction with a work of art and have tended to ignore how contextual elements influence the aesthetic experience. To address these limitations, the present study explored how art appreciators described and constructed meaning to explain why an aesthetic experience was memorable. Interviews were conducted with 16 adults who reported having a memorable aesthetic experience. The semi-structured interview asked participants to describe a timeline of events and experiences that happened before, during, and after an aesthetic encounter. The researcher also inquired about environmental and social factors related to the aesthetic experience. Narrative plots of each interview were created to present the voice of the participants and highlight important contextual information. The analysis of the interview transcripts used a constructivist grounded theory approach to discover major themes across the participants' narratives. The findings that emerged from the narrative results suggest the heterogeneity of art appreciation experiences and the possibility of a hierarchy of increasingly complex and meaningful aesthetic experiences. The importance of preceding conditions suggests the significance of the contextual placement of the aesthetic experience in viewers' lives and reports of lasting effects indicate the timelessness of aesthetic experiences. Evidence suggests that five distinct events involving multiple psychological processes may create a unique aesthetic encounter that is also grounded in a context familiar to the viewer. Results also reveal that psychological and social benefits received from memorable aesthetic experiences contribute to the hedonic value and intrinsic motivation for art appreciation. Additionally, findings from the Participants' responses about their interview experiences indicate that talking about a memorable aesthetic experience may offer personal insight that may be useful in clinical psychology.