Social Psychology and the Arts

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Social Psychology and the Arts

• Amber Brown

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Introduction

• Overview of Field
• Empirical Studies of the Arts
• Present 3 topics
• Music and Emotion
• Chills, Thrills, and Awe
• Gender representations of agency in Art

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Music and Emotion

• Basic emotions
• Involve bodily systems
• Acute/episodic
• Pronounced
• Identifiable
• Universal
• Attributable to cause

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Music and Emotion

• Representation of emotion in music
• Possibly insufficient to induce represented
  emotion in listener
• Music represents dynamic properties of emotions
  (Langer)
• Examples
• Student comments?

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Music and Emotion

• Interactive effects of music and social
  situations
• Listening to sad music when already sad
• Properties of music versus personal associations
  with music
• Effect of arousal/anger on musical choice
  (Konecni, 1985)

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Chills, Thrills, and Awe

• Awe treated in different domains
• Religion
• Sociology
• Philosophy
• Psychology

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Chills, Thrills, and Awe

• Keltner and Haidt (2003)
• Prototype approach- vastness and accommodation
• Variants- threat, beauty, ability, virtue,
  supernatural causality
• Extensions- non-powerful people, nature, human
  art and artifact, epiphanic experience

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Chills, Thrills, and Awe

• Sublime stimulus (object versus subject)
• Awe is reaction to sublime (Konecni)
• Being moved
• Thrills/chills

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Chills, Thrills, and Awe

• Examples from class of awe-inspiring, awesome
  moments

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Chills, Thrills, and Awe
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Chills, Thrills, and Awe
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Chills, Thrills, and Awe
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Chills, Thrills, and Awe

• In response to music
• Lower threshold for chills and thrills than awe
• Strong experiences with Music Project
  (Gabrielson, 2003)
• Examples

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Chills, Thrills, and Awe

• Strong experiences with Music Project
  (Gabrielson, 2003)
• General characteristics
• Physical reactions
• Perception
• Cognition
• Emotion
• Existential and transcendental
• Personal development

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Chills, Thrills, and Awe

• Certain musical structures (Sloboda, 1991)
• Harmony descending to tonic
• Delay of final cadence
• Melodic sequences
• Harmonic and melodic acceleration to cadence
• New or unprepared harmony
• Sudden dynamic change
• Repeated syncopation

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Profiles and Agency

• In paintings, long-standing bias for showing left
  cheek, particularly in women
• 56 men, 68 women
• Lessened over time
• Right side is seen as more potent, active
• Examples

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Profiles and Agency
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Profiles and Agency
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Profiles and Agency
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Profiles and Agency
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Profiles and Agency

• Agency Hypothesis, Chatterjee (2002)
• Agent to left of recipient
• Passive female sitters, less agency
• Greater potency of right side portraits
• Examples in todays media

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Profiles and Agency
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Profiles and Agency
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Profiles and Agency
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Profiles and Agency

• Other examples
• Will and Grace
• ?