Do you like ‘Dogs Playing Poker?’ science asks
If you have ever wondered whether the title on a work of abstract art — say Blue No. 2 — influences how you feel about it, you’ll be intrigued by a new study from the University of Pittsburgh. Researchers there found that people prefer works with straightforward titles like Curved Lines or Dots of Color to those with figurative titles like Ice Dancing or Sabotage.
Another study released last month by psychologists at Boston College found that a big reason people favor an artist’s work over an identical copy is their belief that some essence of the artist is left behind in the original.
“Philosophers have grappled with questions about the arts for centuries, and lay people have puzzled about them too,” Ellen Winner, a Boston College professor who led the study there, said. “Now, psychologists have begun to explore these same questions and have made many fascinating discoveries.”
The mysteries of the aesthetic response, and the creative impulse, have become a burgeoning area of inquiry for scientific researchers across many disciplines. They hope quantifiable data and statistical analysis can help explain matters that some consider ineffable — like why we paint or sing, or why we naturally favor Van Gogh’s sunflowers over the landscapes we encounter in budget hotel rooms.
Nearly two dozen research labs across the United States are studying aesthetics — examining not just the visual arts but domains like music, literature and performance — and pumping out scientific papers in disciplines that include anthropology, neuroscience and biology.
While some studies are born of scholarly curiosity, others are aimed at discovering medical and educational applications based on how art affects the body and brain.
The National Endowment for the Arts is helping fund research into the potential therapeutic benefits of art “in treating a disease or disorder, or in improving symptoms for a chronic disease, disorder or health condition.” One specific question: “How does a dosage — frequency, duration, or intensity — of creative arts therapy relate to individual or program-level outcomes?”
A $3 million grant last year from the endowment to the Pentagon’s Military Arts Healing Network helped fund a study to determine whether having service members decorate blank plaster masks can help with diagnosing and treating post-traumatic stress disorder. Preliminary findings suggest the masks offer clues to the psychological states of soldiers and veterans otherwise reluctant to report symptoms because of social stigma.
“We all want to raise the quality of evidence in this space,” said Sunil Iyengar, director of the NEA’s Office of Research & Analysis.
Another study by Drexel University in Philadelphia offers hope that art therapy can have physiological benefits.
Researchers determined that 45 minutes spent on art projects “resulted in a statistically significant lowering of cortisol levels,” a hormonal marker of stress, measured in before-and-after saliva samples from participants.
Winner’s team at Boston College published its study, Essentialist Beliefs in Aesthetic Judgments of Duplicate Artworks in June. The research was designed to explore why people come to devalue pieces they had once revered after finding out that the works were not actually created by the artist.
The study was built around an experiment that featured identical images of the same artwork, presented side by side.
The subjects were told both works had the same market value to eliminate concerns that money might affect the aesthetic judgments. They were told both images were sanctioned by the artist, to alleviate any ethical worries.
In one part of the experiment, the subjects were told that the image on the left had been made by the artist, but the image on the right by the artist’s assistant. Which did they prefer? The viewers strongly favored the image said to have been made by the artist, even though its twin was in all respects identical.