Interventions To Increase Trait Appreciation of Beauty

Abstract

In a 12-week long action research quasi-experimental design, aimed at increasing trait levels of appreciation of beauty, a quasi-experimental group participated in a three credit senior undergraduate college course focused on providing participants with experiences of beauty: natural beauty, artistic beauty, moral beauty, and beautiful ideas. Results indicated that the members of the quasi-experimental group significantly (p=.002) increased their levels of the trait of appreciation beauty compared to a comparison group, and with a large effect size (d=.85). Only one other empirical study demonstrating overall trait changes in appreciation of beauty, possibly due to intentional intervention, has been published. This is the first study to report an intervention that may have significantly (p=.05) increased the trait of appreciation of artistic beauty (medium effect size, d=.53) and the trait of appreciation of beautiful ideas (p = .05, medium effect sized = .76).