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Category: Project

Description: Despite a long-standing scientific interest in aesthetic emotions, we still are lacking an assessment tool to capture the broad range of emotions involved in aesthetic experiences across different domains. Elicitors of aesthetic emotions are not limited to the arts in the strict sense but extend to design, built environments, and nature. This project is devoted to the development of a questionnaire that is applicable across many of these domains: the Aesthetic Emotions Scale (AESTHEMOS). Based on theoretical accounts of aesthetic emotions and an extensive review of extant measures of aesthetic emotions within specific domains like music, literature, film, painting, advertisement, design, and architecture, we arrived at an item set to study aesthetic emotions. In a field study, we tested 75 items and selected items to be included in the first version of our new assessment tool. It contains 21 subscales with two items each, designed to assess the emotional signature of an aesthetic experience in a highly differentiated manner. These encompass prototypical aesthetic emotions (e.g., the feeling of beauty, being moved, fascination, and awe), epistemic emotions (e.g., interest and insight), and emotions indicative of amusement (humor and joy). In addition, the AESTHEMOS subscales capture both activating (energy and vitality) and calming (relaxation) effects of aesthetic experiences and negative emotions that may contribute to aesthetic displeasure (e.g., the feeling of ugliness, boredom, and confusion).