Empirical Aesthetics: In Quest of a Clear Terminology and Valid Methodology

Abstract

Empirical aesthetics is truly an emerging field of research. Besides the impressive generation and production, a great variety of empirical insights and a worldwide increasing and scientifically active community we face an obvious confusion of terminology and a lack of standard research methods to base our research on. The initial question to be addressed for researchers in the field of aesthetics is whether they aim to research aesthetics regarding art-related phenomena or whether they want to know how everyday phenomena are processed aesthetically. Additionally, we have to define what constructs like aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic experience really mean and how we can optimally operationalize and measure such constructs in terms of employed variables and research methodology. For instance, artworks can definitely be processed on basis of beauty aspects, but at least with contemporary art, beauty assessments do not reflect art-specific processing which is much more about elaboration, understanding and struggling for meaning. Only by clearly defining our main concepts and methodology, we will succeed in advancing the field of empirical aesthetics in the future. This chapter also sums up some methods for measuring phenomena associated with aesthetic experience, called the research method toolbox for capturing aesthetic experience. Such methods are particularly important to be employed in order to capture the dynamics going on while we experience something aesthetically.