On the psychophysiology of aesthetics: Automatic and controlled processes of aesthetic appreciation.

摘要: This chapter will focus on receptive and central aspects of aesthetic processing, that is on aesthetic appreciation. It will highlight the contributions of unconscious and conscious memory processes involved. Contemplating the beauty of a nameless exotic flower differs vastly from enjoying a staging of Wagners Ring of the Nibelung. Expertise with the subject matter, naturally, determines the levels of processing that can be reached at all. Furthermore, there is virtually no thing, it seems, that cannot be appreciated aesthetically. The human mind is accommodating all the different entities, objects, designs, works of art, and individual tastes. Are there limits to the extent of variation in aesthetic appreciation, limits to the seeming arbitrariness? Understanding the mental modes of processing appears to be crucial for answering this question. One approach to illuminating this issue is looking at automatic versus controlled …