Experiencing Flow While Viewing Art: Development of the Aesthetic Experience Questionnaire

Experiencing Flow While Viewing Art: Development of the Aesthetic Experience Questionnaire

Aesthetic experiences are the attitudes, perceptions, or acts of attention involved with viewing art. When the viewer is fully engaged, aesthetic experiences are comparable with flow experiences, which are optimal experiences described by people as "being in the zone" or "getting lost...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 113 - 124
Main Authors: Wanzer, Dana Linnell, Finley, Kelsey Procter, Zarian, Steven, Cortez, Noreen
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Washington Educational Publishing Foundation 01-02-2020
American Psychological Association
Subjects:
Aesthetics
Attitude Measures
Cognition & reasoning
Experiences (Events)
Female
Flow (Consciousness State)
Human
Male
Personal experiences
Questionnaires
Test Construction
Test Validity
Visual arts
art
aesthetic experience
flow
scale development
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Summary:Aesthetic experiences are the attitudes, perceptions, or acts of attention involved with viewing art. When the viewer is fully engaged, aesthetic experiences are comparable with flow experiences, which are optimal experiences described by people as "being in the zone" or "getting lost" in the moment. This study uses the framework of aesthetic experiences by Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson (1990), which conceptualizes aesthetic experiences as having 4 art-related dimensions and a fifth flow dimension. Using this conceptualization, we created the Aesthetic Experience Questionnaire (AEQ) and tested its validity in a general population of Amazon Mechanical Turk users. Results demonstrated that the AEQ consists of 4 artistically related dimensions (i.e., perceptual, emotional, cultural, understanding) and 2 flow dimensions (i.e., proximal conditions, experience). The AEQ demonstrated convergent validity with related constructs (i.e., openness to experience, inspiration, curiosity and exploration), and individuals with greater artistic experience had more intense ratings of aesthetic experiences. Overall, this study lends support to Csikszentmihalyi and Robinson's framework of aesthetic experiences and provides a useful measure of aesthetic experiences for future studies.
ISSN:1931-3896
1931-390X
DOI:10.1037/aca0000203