2/5/2025 | 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM | Grand Peninsula B

Aesthetic experiences: Mostly pleasurable, often meaningful, potentially translational, transcendent, and transformative

Author(s)

Claus-Christian Carbon | University of Bamberg

Abstract

Psychological aesthetics explores how humans experience and respond to art, beauty, and design, revealing that these encounters are often multi-faceted, offering pleasure, deeper meaning, and even personal transformation. This presentation will delve into the diverse dimensions of aesthetic experience. It begins with the pleasure derived from art and beauty, showing how it enhances emotional well-being. Beyond pleasure, aesthetic experiences often serve as a platform for meaning-making, enabling reflection and the search for purpose. These insights have translational potential, informing people about highly complex narratives via a very compact piece of art, which functions relatively culture-independently and can strongly impact the beholder‘s affective and cognitive processing. Additionally, we explore how certain aesthetic encounters can evoke transcendence, fostering a connection to something greater than the self. Finally, we examine the transformative power of aesthetics, showing how profound experiences with beauty can reshape identity, values, and emotional life. This talk highlights the integral role of aesthetics in human flourishing, personal growth, societal well-being, and cultural development.