Mapping the Conceptual Domain of Aesthetic Emotion Terms: A Pile-Sort Study

Aesthetic evaluations are often couched in terms of emotional impact; for example, an artwork may be deemed fascinating, moving, or surprising. Such emotional responses have been called "aesthetic emotions." Given the broad variety of terms used to conceptualize emotional reactions to art and to other elicitors of aesthetic responses, the authors performed an exploratory study aimed at mapping the conceptual domain of such terms by using a pile-sort task. Seventy-five items designating emotional reactions during aesthetic experiences were derived from the literature. Sixty students of the arts and related disciplines sorted the items into piles as determined by judged similarity. The authors used cluster and network analyses to draw up a highly granular conceptual map of the selected emotion terms. This map offers new information on the categorization and strength of associations between emotion terms that helps inform future conceptualizations and measures of specific aesthetic emotions. The analyses further revealed that complex and mixed emotional experiences of captivation, enchantment, and cognitive engagement are differentiated from emotions with purely negative or positive valence early on. The former emotions, which are regarded as typical of aesthetic experience, were found to lie at the heart of the conceptual domain of aesthetic emotion terms. (PsycINFO Database Recor