Beauty can be found in every aspect of our lives and is a quintessential part of the human experience. Our study aims to investigate the role that our aesthetic sense plays in our lives. We hypothesize, based on evolutionary theory, that aesthetic experiences are common, influence our perception of the world, have positive impacts on our wellbeing, and can be measured physiologically. In addition, we explore how individual differences and environmental context may influence these effects. Finally, we are also interested in the elicitors of the aesthetic experience, specifically differentiating between man-made (e.g. art) and natural objects.
We will employ a multi-method approach where participants equipped with mobile eye-trackers and a heartrate monitor walk along the “Donaukanal” in Vienna, which contains natural elements and street-art. Eye-tracking is used to assess how these aesthetically evaluated objects influence our perception of the world by capturing and directing visual attention. We will look at the effect of aesthetic experiences on wellbeing in terms of positive mood, measured by Heartrate variability and the I-PANAS-SF (Thompson, 2017). Participants will also be asked to fill out a measure on nature-relatedness (NR-6, Nisbet & Zelenski, 2013) and art interest (VAIAK, Specker et al., 2018) as additional measures of individual differences. In a lab follow-up session, participants will be shown the footage from their walk and asked to rate the beauty of the objects they encountered in the field. This will allow us to investigate the connection between visual attention, wellbeing, and subjective aesthetic rating.