Research studies have focused on stimulus features as well as internal or contextual factors to understand aesthetic experience. An important question is the nature of processes that are involved in all aesthetic experiences. One possible process is \"disinterested attention\" that may be necessary for one to have an aesthetic experience. This can be contrasted with a perceiver who attends to an object or event only in a goal-directed or instrumental or practical manner. It has been claimed that \"disinterested attention\" involves attention being focused on the aesthetic object or event while being distributed across its features or components. Other ideas have focused on better reallocation of attention over time. The potential nature of attention could be linked to aspects of mindfulness. Studies looking at the effects of mindfulness on aesthetic experience have shown it increases the frequency of having aesthetic experience. The nature of attention needed for an aesthetic experience can be thought of as a form of generosity that could be linked to the notions of a gift. Mindful attention to objects or life as a gift, perhaps enables us to see objects and perhaps life itself in non-instrumental terms resulting in an aesthetic experience.

A series of eleven public concerts (staging chamber music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Brett Dean, Johannes Brahms) was organized with the goal to analyze physiological synchronies within the audiences and associations of synchrony with psychological variables. We hypothesized that the music would induce synchronized physiology, which would be linked to participants\' aesthetic experiences, affect, and personality traits. Physiological measures (cardiac, electrodermal, respiration) of 695 participants were recorded during presentations. Before and after concerts, questionnaires provided self-report scales and standardized measures of participants\' affectivity, personality traits, aesthetic experiences and listening modes. Synchrony was computed by a cross-correlational algorithm to obtain, for each participant and physiological variable (heart rate, heart-rate variability, respiration rate, respiration, skin-conductance response), how much each individual participant contributed to overall audience synchrony. In hierarchical models, such synchrony contribution was used as the dependent and the various self-report scales as predictor variables. We found that physiology throughout audiences was significantly synchronized, as expected with the exception of breathing behavior. There were links between synchrony and affectivity. Personality moderated the synchrony levels: Openness was positively associated, Extraversion and Neuroticism negatively. Several factors of experiences and listening modes predicted synchrony. Emotional listening was associated with reduced, whereas both structual and sound-focused listening was associated with increased synchrony. We concluded with an updated, nuanced understanding of synchrony on the timescale of whole concerts, inviting elaboration by synchony studies on shorter timescales of music passages.

Emerging technological innovations offer the potential for experiential engagement through virtual scenarios, yet the viability of this approach for educational purposes remains significantly underexplored. This study aims to assess the feasibility of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies in providing users with aesthetic experiences when visiting digital exhibitions. A total of 190 students participated in this investigation. The control group visited traditional exhibits at the Palace Museum in Beijing. This group underwent a survey to evaluate their acquired aesthetic experience. In contrast, the experimental group, comprising 96 students, engaged with VR/AR scenarios at the Palace Museum in Beijing. Accordingly, students in the experimental group were also surveyed to evaluate both their aesthetic experiences and, additionally, their user experiences. The survey results unveiled significant distinctions in aesthetic experiences between students in the control and experimental groups. Moreover, there were notable correlations between individual variables related to user and aesthetic experiences within the experimental group. Furthermore, the study revealed disparities in both user and aesthetic experiences among male and female students. The findings have implications for aesthetic education teachers and officials in the context of developing sound strategies for providing aesthetic experiences to their students. This information is also of interest to employees of museums, exhibitions, and other cultural facilities, who are interested in holding or hold digital exhibitions.

A growing literature in philosophy of science focuses on the role of aesthetics in scientific practice, with the experiment recently recognized for its aesthetic value. However, the literature on aesthetics in experimentation grows out of case studies from the history of science, leaving open the question as to how contemporary scientists experience aesthetics in their experimental work. In this paper we offer the first qualitative, empirical analysis of aesthetic experiences regarding experimental practice, drawing from in-depth interviews with 215 scientists in four countries. We identify six categories of aesthetic experience we find in experimentation, their function, and new questions emerging from our study.

Although the role of aesthetics and aesthetic education in everyday life was discussed as early as the ancient philosophers, the psychological mechanisms shaping the aesthetic quotient have hardly been investigated by empirical studies. The aim of this study was to examine the direct relationship between experience and aesthetic competence, and the mediating role of need for cognition. The study involved 201 Polish adults, aged 18 to 76 (M = 26.40; SD = 11.89), 65% of whom were women. The respondents completed anonymous questionnaires on an online platform. The surveys included a metric, the Aesthetic Competence Scale (ACS), the Aesthetic Experience Questionnaire (AEQ) and the Need for Cognition Scale (NCS). A positive correlation coefficient was obtained between all three variables studied, with need for cognition acting as a mediator in the relationship between experience and aesthetic competence. The findings indicate that individuals reporting intense aesthetic experiences have a higher aesthetic competence if this relationship is mediated by a high need for cognitive effort.

UNASSIGNED: The ability to integrate beauty (AIB) is the ability to inner transformation including thinking about oneself, perceived phenomena, or the world through exposure to an aesthetic object (or phenomenon). Previous research indicates that the AIB is positively related to aesthetic experience. Still, it is unclear whether spirituality can mediate the relationship between the two variables. Spirituality is understood as an experience of transcendence that relates to the unseen and is \"larger than human\". The aim of the study was to analyze the relationship between emotional and cognitive experiences related to the reception of art (as the most representative form of beauty) and the ability to connect with spirituality and aesthetic experiences.
UNASSIGNED: The online survey included a sample of N = 195 adults (74% female) between the ages of 18 and 54. The Spirituality Scale (SD-36), the Aesthetic Experience Questionnaire (AEQ) and the Ability to Integrate Beauty Scale (AIBS) were used to test hypotheses.
UNASSIGNED: The analysis revealed a statistically significant, moderate relationship between the ability to integrate beauty and both the total aesthetic experience score and the spirituality scale score. The results support the hypothesis that there is a relationship between aesthetic experience in art and spirituality. The study also confirmed the mediating effect of spirituality on the relationship between aesthetic experience and aesthetic intelligence.
UNASSIGNED: Individuals with a higher level of spiritual development tend to have a greater ability to integrate beauty and have more intense aesthetic experiences, which in turn may increase their aesthetic intelligence. The results suggest that a deepened spirituality contributes to a greater ability to integrate beauty.

UNASSIGNED: The purpose of the article is to present the results of works on the Polish version of the Aesthetic Experience Questionnaire (AEQ). The AEQ is a 22-item tool for assessing aesthetic experience in the following dimensions: emotional, cultural, perceptual, understanding, and two dimensions about flow (proximal conditions and flow experience).
UNASSIGNED: In the course of works on the Polish version of the AEQ, 3 independent studies with the participation of more than 800 people were carried out. In addition to the AEQ measurement, the tools included: the Emotion Regulation Strategies for Artistic Creative Activities Scale, the Brief Music in Mood Regulation, the Aesthetic Competence Scale, the Aesthetic Processing Preference Scale, the Need for Cognition Scale, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies - Depression Scale, the Material Values Scale and the Multidimensional Existential Meaning Scale.
UNASSIGNED: The results obtained in the three studies through Confirmatory Factor Analysis indicated the compliance of the factor structure of the Polish version of the AEQ with the original and its good psychometric characteristics. It was also shown that the overall result and individual components of the aesthetic experience correlate positively with emotion regulation through artistic creative activities and mood regulation through music, aesthetic competences (music, literature, plastic arts, film), cognitive curiosity and some dimensions of aesthetic processing preferences. The studies also proved a very weak positive relationship between aesthetic experience and meaning of life. The assumption about a negative correlation between aesthetic experience and depression or materialism was not confirmed.
UNASSIGNED: The Polish version of the AEQ is a credible psychometric measurement and encourages scientists to design research on the psychology of art and aesthetics in the Polish cultural conditions.

Success as a dancer is closely associated with positive dance judgments by perceivers. Although dancers\' physical appearance (attractiveness, style) might affect dance judgments beyond dance-specific attributes (technique, expression), they have largely been unconsidered in previous studies. To contribute to a comprehensive explanation of real-life dance judgments, we applied the lens model, an approach explicitly developed to explain the emergence of social judgments by multiple attributes. Therefore, video-records of 70 solo performances were (1) rated regarding dancers\' physical appearance, technique, and expression and (2) judged by 33 perceivers. Results of cross-classified mixed-effects models revealed that attributes of all domains were significantly related to dance judgements. Considered simultaneously, however, only dance-specific attributes contributed to the prediction of dance judgments. Additional moderation analyses underscored the importance of perceivers\' expertise in judging dance. We discuss the lens model as suitable framework for a naturalistic approach to the study of aesthetic experiences and sports performances.

Installation art, with its immersive and participatory character, has been argued to require the use and awareness of the body, which potentially constitute key parts of the artwork\'s experience and appreciation. Heightened body awareness is even argued to be a key to particularly profound emotional or even transformative states, which have been frequently ascribed to this genre. However, the body in the experience of installation art has rarely been empirically considered. To address this gap, we investigated the body\'s role in the experience of Tomás Saraceno\'s in orbit installation. Based on a list of self-report items created from a review of the theoretical literature, we-for the first time-captured (quantitatively and qualitatively): what kind of subjective bodily experiences visitors (N = 230) reported, how these items grouped into clusters (using network science), and how these relate to emotion, art appraisal, and transformative outcomes. Network analysis of the items determined four communities related to \"interoception,\" \"presence,\" \"disturbance,\" and \"proprioception.\" Proprioception (e.g., awareness of balance/movement/weight) turned out to be a significant determinant of art appreciation in our study, and, together with \"disturbing\" body experiences (feeling awkward/watched/chills), coincided with transformation. We also assessed individual differences in body awareness yet did not find that these moderate those relationships. We suggest future research on installation art based on a more unified assessment of the role of the body in embodied-enactive aesthetics and its relation to the intensity and impact of art experience in general.

UNASSIGNED: Ferrucci, a philosopher and psychotherapist, presented an original three-factor aesthetic intelligence concept in his book \"Beauty and Soul\" (2009). The subject of this article is the presentation of work on the construction of a scale for measuring one of the three dimensions of aesthetic intelligence, the ability to integrate beauty (AIB). This is probably the first attempt to empirically operationalize this concept.
UNASSIGNED: The three independent studies were carried out with a total of 604 participants. The aim of the first study was to develop the AIBS scale and to test its factor structure. During Study 2 and Study 3, we verified the AIBS structure through the confirmatory analysis and checked its convergent and discriminant validity.
UNASSIGNED: The outcomes indicate that a one-factor, and seven-item tool is characterized by very good psychometric properties. Moreover, the results suggest that the AIB is indeed positively related to the perception of artworks (6 dimensions of an aesthetic experience), regulation of emotions through artistic creative activities, as well as to aesthetic competencies in art. The AIB is indeed positively related to the greater intensity of light triad traits (humanism, kantianism, faith in humanity) and to the development of the individual in five areas of spirituality. AIB is also only slightly related to the search for meaning and to one dimension of well-being, which is satisfaction and the sense of power.