ReviewFrontiers in human neuroscience2017
What Is Art Good For? The Socio-Epistemic Value of Art.
Review in Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Aesthetic experiences and their transformative power: a systematic review.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Pooled it
- An art-based labyrinth activity workshop experience: a qualitative study on psychological counselor candidates from the perspective of acceptance and commitment therapy.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Is there any (emotional) difference between seeing art in the museum vs. in the lab? A comparative study of phenomenal art experiences of original artworks and digital reproductions.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Selective emotion regulation in creative art production: Psychophysiological reactivity during painting reduces anxiety.iScience · 2025Article
- A Personal Perspective on Psychology of Aesthetics and the Arts: Ecologically Valid, Interdisciplinary, and Diverse Methodologies.Creativity research journal · 2025Article
- Effective strategies for teachers to guide children's art activities: based on a survey of children's art activities and teacher guidance, and an analysis of their correlation.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Empathy strengthens the effect of emotion on beauty.Research square · 2024Article
- Humans versus AI: whether and why we prefer human-created compared to AI-created artwork.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2023Article
- The role of the body in the experience of installation art: a case study of visitors' bodily, emotional, and transformative experiences in Tomás Saraceno's "Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- More Than Meets the Eye: Art Engages the Social Brain.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Review
- Loss and beauty: how experts and novices judge paintings with lacunae.Psychological research · 2021Article
- Article
- Capturing Aesthetic Experiences With Installation Art: An Empirical Assessment of Emotion, Evaluations, and Mobile Eye Tracking in Olafur Eliasson's "Baroque, Baroque!"Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
- Response to: Commentary: What Is Art Good For? The Socio-Epistemic Value of Art.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2018Article
- Commentary: What Is Art Good For? The Socio-Epistemic Value of Art.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2017Article
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2 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Scientists, humanists, and art lovers alike value art not just for its beauty, but also for its social and epistemic importance; that is, for its communicative nature, its capacity to increase one's self-knowledge and encourage personal growth, and its ability to challenge our schemas and preconceptions. However, empirical research tends to discount the importance of such social and epistemic outcomes of art engagement, instead focusing on individuals' preferences, judgments of beauty, pleasure, or other emotional appraisals as the primary outcomes of art appreciation. Here, we argue that a systematic neuroscientific study of art appreciation must move beyond understanding aesthetics alone, and toward investigating the social importance of art appreciation. We make our argument for such a shift in focus first, by situating art appreciation as an active social practice. We follow by reviewing the available psychological and cognitive neuroscientific evidence that art appreciation cultivates socio-epistemic skills such as self- and other-understanding, and discuss philosophical frameworks which suggest a more comprehensive empirical investigation. Finally, we argue that focusing on the socio-epistemic values of art engagement highlights the important role art plays in our lives. Empirical research on art appreciation can thus be used to show that engagement with art has specific social and personal value, the cultivation of which is important to us as individuals, and as communities.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.