In order to explain what has happened in psychological aesthetics and the study of genius, a brief overview of the history of psychology since the nineteenth century is given. There has been a movement from grand theories and the beginnings of experimental aesthetics though behaviorism, which was a catastrophic era for the study of aesthetics, to a sort of renaissance marked by the emergence of cognitive psychology. Across the 25 years during which Empirical Studies of the Arts has been published there has been a consistent trend in psychological studies of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts. In the early years, studies were based upon a mélange of late behaviorist, early cognitive, and psychodynamic theories. This was followed by a period during which cognitive approaches were dominant. During the last decade there has been a very clear trend toward work based upon evolutionary psychology and neuroscience. Examples of some but far from all of the important work done during the last several decades are discussed.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AllportG. W. (1965). Personal communication.
2.
AndreasenN. C. (2005). The creating brain: The neuroscience of creativity.New York: Dana Press.
3.
AshbyF. G.IsenA. M., & TurkenA. U. (1999). A neuropsychological theory of affect and its influence on cognition. Psychological Review, 106, 529–559.
4.
AvitalT. (2003). Art versus nonart: Art out of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5.
BaumgartenA. G. (1750). Aesthetica. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1970.
6.
Beebe-CenterJ. G. (1932). The psychology of pleasantness and unpleasantness. New York: D. Van Nostrand.
7.
BekhterevaN. P.StarchenkoM. G.KlyucharevV. A.Vorob'evV. A.PakhomovS. V., & MedvedevS. V. (2000). Study of the brain organization of creativity: II. Positron-emission tomography data. Human Physiology, 26, 516–522.
8.
BerlyneD. E. (1960). Conflict, arousal, and curiosity.New York: McGraw-Hill.
9.
BerlyneD. E. (1971). Aesthetics and psychobiology.New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
10.
BerlyneD. E. (1974a). Personal communication.
11.
BerlyneD. E. (1974b). Studies in the new experimental aesthetics: Steps toward an objective psychology of aesthetic appreciation. Washington, DC: Hemisphere.
12.
BirkhoffG. (1933). Aesthetic measure.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
13.
BlumenthalA. (1977). The process of cognition.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
14.
BoasF. (1927). Primitive art.Oslo: H. Aschehoug.
15.
BrewerW. F., & LichtensteinE. H. (1982). Stories are to entertain: A structural-affect theory of stories. Journal of Pragmatics, 6, 473–486.
16.
BussD. M. (2005). The handbook of evolutionary psychology.New York: Wiley.
17.
CampbellD. T. (1960). Blind variation and selective retention in creative thought as in other knowledge processes. Psychological Review, 67, 380–400.
18.
CarneiroR. L. (2001). Evolutionism in cultural anthropology: A critical history.Boulder, CO: Westview.
Chavez-EakleR. A. (2004). On the neurobiology of the creative process. Bulletin of Psychology and the Arts, 5, 29–35.
21.
ChildI. L. (1969). Esthetics. In LindzeyG. & AronsonE. (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 853–916). Reading MA: Addison Wesley.
22.
ComteA. (1830-1842). Cours de philosophie positive.Paris: Bacelier.
23.
CookeB., & TurnerF. (1999). Biopoetics: Evolutionary explorations in the arts. New York: Paragon House.
24.
CosmidesL. (2006). Personal communication.
25.
CsikszentmihalyiM. (1997). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention.New York: Harper.
26.
CupchikG. C., & LászlóJ. (Eds.). (1992). Emerging visions of the aesthetic process.New York: Cambridge University Press.
27.
DantoA. C. (1997). After the end of art: Contemporary art and the pale of history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
28.
DarwinC. (1859). On the origin of species by means of natural selection.London: John Murray.
29.
DarwinC. (1871). The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. London: John Murray.
30.
DeutschD. (Ed.). (1998). The psychology of music.New York: Academic Press.
31.
DeutschD. (2006). Absolute pitch among American and Chinese conservatory students: Prevalence differences, and evidence for a speech-related critical period. Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 119, 719–722.
32.
DissanayakeE. (1988). What is art for?Seattle: University of Washington Press.
33.
DissanayakeE. (2006). Personal communication.
34.
DorfmanL.MartindaleC., & PetrovV. (2007). Aesthetics and innovation.Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press.
35.
EysenckH. J. (1991). Personal communication.
36.
EysenckH. J. (1993). Creativity and personality: Suggestions for a theory. Psychological Inquiry, 4, 147–178.
37.
EysenckH. J. (1995). Genius: The natural history of creativity.New York: Cambridge University Press.
38.
EysenckH. J., & EysenckS. B. (1976). Psychoticism as a dimension of personality.London: Hodder & Stoughton.
39.
FauvelJ.FloodR., & WilsonR. (Eds.). (2006). Music and mathematics: From Pythagoras to fractals. New York: Oxford University Press.
40.
FechnerG. T. (1876). Vorschule der Ästhetik. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel.
41.
FlahertyA. W. (2005). Frontotemporal and dopaminergic control of idea generation and creative drive. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 493, 147–153.
42.
GhiselinB. (Ed.). (1985). The creative process: Reflections on the invention in the arts and sciences. Berkeley: University of California Press.
43.
GottschallJ., & WilsonD. S. (Eds.). (2005). The literary animal: Evolution and the nature of narrative. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
44.
GreenbergC. (1961). Art and culture: Critical essays. Boston, MA: Beacon.
45.
HadamardJ. (1945). An essay on the psychology of invention in the mathematical field.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
46.
HallG. S. (1895). Editorial. American Journal of Psychology, 7, 3–8.
47.
HannasW. C. (2003). Writing on the wall: How Asian orthography curbs creativity. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
48.
HelsonR. (1990). Creativity in women: Outer and inner views over time. In RuncoM. A. & AlbertR. S. (Eds.), Theories of creativity (pp. 46–58). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
49.
HelsonR. (1996). In search of the creative personality. Creativity Research Journal, 9, 295–306.
50.
HelsonR. (1999). A longitudinal study of creative personality in women. Creativity Research Journal, 12, 89–101.
51.
HelsonR., & WinkP. (1996). Originality and complexity in college women: Personality, attitudinal, and life correlates over thirty years. In MontuoriA. (Ed.), Unusual associates: Essays in honor of Frank Barron (pp. 102–122). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
52.
HestonL. L. (1965). Psychiatric disorders in foster-home-reared children of schizophrenic mothers. British Journal of Psychiatry, 112, 819–825.
53.
HockneyD. (2006). Secret knowledge: Rediscovering the lost techniques of the old masters.New York: Studio.
54.
HsuK. J., & HsuA. (1991). Self-similarity in the “1/f noise” called music. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 88, 3507–3509.
55.
JacobsonT. (2006). Bridging the arts and sciences: A framework for the psychology of aesthetics, Leonardo, 80, 155–162.
56.
JamisonK. R. (1993). Touched with fire: Manic-depressive illness and the artistic temperament.New York: Free Press.
57.
JourdainR. (1998). Music, the brain, and ecstasy: How music captures our imagination.New York: Harper.
58.
KantI. (1790). Kritik der Urtheilskraft. Berlin: Lagarde und Friedrich.
59.
KarlssonJ. L. (1978). Inheritance of creative intelligence: A study for future generations.Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall.
60.
KaufmanJ. C., & SternbergR. J. (Eds.). (2006). The international handbook of creativity.New York: Cambridge University Press.
61.
KreitlerH., & KreitlerS. (1972). Psychology of the arts. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
62.
KrisE. (1952). Psychoanalytic explorations in art. New York: International Universities Press.
63.
LederH.BelkeB.OeberstA., & AugustinD. (2004). A model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments. British Journal of Psychology, 95, 489–508
LivingstoneM. S. (2002). Vision and art: The biology of seeing. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
66.
LocherP. (2003). An empirical investigation of the visual rightness theory of picture perception. Acta Psychologica, 114, 147–164.
67.
LocherP.MartindaleC., & DorfmanL. (2006). New directions in aesthetics, creativity, and the arts.Amityville, NY: Baywood.
68.
LombrosoC. (1901). The man of genius. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
69.
MachotkaP. (1996). Cézanne: Landscape into art.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
70.
MaddenC. (1999). Fractals in music: Introductory mathematics for musical analysis.Salt Lake City, UT: High Art Press.
71.
MartindaleC. (1990). The clockwork muse: The predictability of artistic change.New York: Basic Books.
72.
MartindaleC. (1995). Creativity and connectionism. In SmithS.WardT., & FinkeR. (Eds.), The creative cognition approach (pp. 249–268). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
73.
MartindaleC. (1999). Biological bases of creativity. In SternbergR. J. (Ed.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 137–152). New York: Cambridge University Press.
74.
MartindaleC. (2007a). A neural-network theory of beauty. In MartindaleC.LocherP., & PetrovV. (Eds.), Evolutionary and neurocognitive approaches to aesthetics, creativity, and the arts (pp. 182–193). Amityville, NY: Baywood.
75.
MartindaleC. (2007b). Sociocultural oscillations and their analogies with physical waves. In DorfmanL.MartindaleC., & PetrovV. (Eds.), Aesthetics and innovation (pp. 332–369). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press.
76.
MartindaleC.LocherP., & PetrovV. (Eds.). (2007). Evolutionary and neurocognitive approaches to aesthetics, creativity, and the arts.Amityville, NY: Baywood.
77.
MartindaleC.MooreK., & BorkumJ. (1990). Aesthetic preference: Anomalous findings for Berlyne's psychobiological theory. American Journal of Psychology, 103, 53–80.
78.
MartindaleC.MooreK., & WestA. (1988). Relationship of preference judgments to typicality, novelty, and mere exposure. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 6, 79–96.
79.
MednickS. A. (1962). The associative basis of the creative process. Psychological Review, 69, 220–232.
80.
MendelsohnG. A. (1976). Associative and attentional processes in creative performance. Journal of Personality, 44, 341–369.
81.
MiallD. S. (2006). Experimental approaches to reader responses to literature. In LocherP.MartindaleC., & DorfmanL. (Eds.), New directions in aesthetics, creativity, and the arts (pp. 175–188). Amityville, NY: Baywood.
82.
MillerG. (2001). The mating mind: How sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature.New York: Anchor.
83.
MithenS. (2006). The singing Neanderthals: The origins of music, language, mind, and body. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
84.
NardocchioE. F. (Ed.). (1992). Reader response: The empirical dimension.Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
85.
NeuendorfK. (2001). The content analysis guidebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
86.
ParsonsT. (1951). The social system.Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
87.
PeitgenH.-O.HartmutJ., & SaupeD. (2004). Chaos and fractals. New York: Springer.
88.
PeretzI., & ZatorreR. J. (Eds.). (2003). The cognitive neuroscience of music. New York: Oxford University Press.
89.
PoincaréH. (1913). The foundations of science.New York: Science Press.
90.
RamachandranW. S., & HirsteinW. (1999). The science of art: A neurological theory of aesthetic experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6, 15–51.
91.
ReberR.SchwarzN., & WinkielmanP. (2004). Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in the perceiver's processing experience?Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8, 364–382.
92.
RothenburgA. (2000). Creativity and psychopathology. Bulletin of Psychology and the Arts, 1, 55–58.
93.
RuncoM. (2004). Creativity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 657–687.
94.
RuncoM. (2006). Creativity—Theories and themes: Research, development, and practice. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier.
95.
RuncoM., & PritzkerS. (Eds.). (1999). Encyclopedia of creativity. New York: Academic Press.
96.
SebeokT. A. (1986). Personal communication.
97.
ShepardR. N. (1982). Geometrical approximations to the structure of musical pitch. Psychological Review, 89, 305–333.
98.
SimontonD. K. (1988). Scientific genius: A psychology of science. New York: Cambridge University Press.
99.
SimontonD. K. (1994). Greatness: Who makes history and why. New York: Guilford Press.
100.
SimontonD. K. (1999). Origins of genius: Darwinian perspectives on creativity. New York: Oxford University Press.
101.
SimontonD. K. (2004). Creativity in science: Chance, logic, genius, and Zeitgeist. New York: Cambridge University Press.
102.
SkovM., & VartanianO. (Eds.). (in press). Neuroaesthetics. Amityville, NY: Baywood.
103.
SlobodaJ. (2006). Exploring the musical mind: Cognition, emotion, ability, function. New York: Oxford University Press.
104.
SolsoR. L. (1996). Cognition and the visual arts.Cambridge: MIT Press.
105.
SolsoR. L. (2003). The psychology of art and the evolution of the conscious brain. Cambridge: MIT Press.
106.
SorokinP. (1937-41). Social and cultural dynamics.New York: American Book Co.
107.
SpencerH. (1851). Social statics.London: John Chapman.
108.
SpencerH. (1855). The principles of psychology.London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman.
109.
SpencerH. (1864). First principles of anew system of philosophy.New York: D. Appleton.
110.
SpencerH. (1897). The principles of sociology.New York: D. Appleton.
111.
SpottsF. (2003). Hitler and the power of aesthetics.New York: Overlook Press.
112.
SteadmanP. (2002). Vermeer's camera: Uncovering the truth behind the masterpieces. New York: Oxford University Press.
113.
SternbergR. J. (Ed.). (1999). Handbook of creativity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
114.
SternbergR. J.KaufmanJ., & PretzJ. E. (2001). The creativity conundrum: A propulsion model of kinds of creative contributions. New York: Psychology Press.
TsurR. (1992). Toward a theory of cognitive poetics.Amsterdam: North-Holland.
119.
VartanianO., & GoelV. (2004). Neuroanatomical correlates of aesthetic preference for paintings. NeuroReport, 15, 893–897.
120.
VartanianO., & GoelV. (2005). Task constraints modulate activation in right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex. NeuroImage, 27, 927–933.
121.
VartanianO., & SkovM. (Eds.). (in press). The neurobiology of creativity.Amityville, NY: Baywood.
122.
VasariG. (1550). Lives of the artists. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946.
123.
von HayekF. A. (1952). The sensory order: An inquiry into the foundations of theoretical psychology.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
124.
von HelmholtzH. (1895). Popular lectures of scientific subjects.London: Longmans, Green.
125.
WallerN. G.BouchardT.LykkenD. T.TellegenA., & BlackerD. M. (1993). Why creativity does not run in families: A study of twins reared apart. Psychological Inquiry, 4, 235–237.
126.
WallasG. (1926). The art of thought.New York: Harcourt Brace.
127.
WashburnD. K., & CroweD. W. (1991). Symmetries of culture: Theory and practice of plane pattern analysis. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
128.
WeberJ.-P. (1969). The psychology of art.New York: Delacorte.
129.
WeisbergR. (1986). Creativity: Genius and other myths.New York: W. H. Freeman.
130.
WhitfieldT. W. A., & SlatterP. E. (1979). The effects of categorisation and proto***typicality on aesthetic choice in a furniture selection task. British Journal of Psychology, 70, 65–75.
