3. Experimental Psychology.
The systematic exper-
imental study
of aesthetic responses is generally re-
garded
as having been initiated by Gustav Fechner,
in his Vorschule der Aesthetik (Leipzig, 1876). He has
been
followed by a large number of investigators,
among whom Richard
Müller-Freienfels and Max Des-
soir are
especially noteworthy. Psychological aestheti-
cians have studied reactions to elements of visual,
musical, and
verbal design (colors, lines, sounds of
words), and to combinations of
elements (rhythm,
meter, pictorial balance); they have used the
“method
of paired comparisons” to discover what kinds
of object
certain people call beautiful, and what kinds of people
call
certain objects beautiful—and why. They have
learned a great
deal about preferences in these matters,
e.g., that it is not the Golden
Rectangle, but propor-
tions close to it,
that are preferred in playing cards,
etc.; that the popularity of red among
American chil-
dren declines after age six;
that British children find
beauty in nature before they become
aware—about age
ten—of beauty in art; that when
photographs of several
men or women are superimposed to produce a
“pro-
file-picture,” it is judged more beautiful than the origi-
nals. Much of this work is reviewed in A.
R. Chandler,
Beauty and Human Nature (New York and London,
1934),
and C. W. Valentine, The Experimental Psychol-
ogy of Beauty (London, 1962).
It is not always clear at what point psychological
aesthetics casts light on
the nature of beauty. Valentine
holds—and offers experimental
evidence (in Chs. 7 and
13) to show—that the appreciation of beauty is not
the same as the enjoyment of pleasure, though typically
accompanied by it;
yet “It has been found more con-
venient in such psychological experiments to ask per-
sons the question, 'Do you like this, and if so,
why?'
or 'Do you find this pleasing?' rather than “Do you
think this beautiful, and why?'” (p. 6). But different
questions, however convenient, are likely to evoke
different answers (cf.
H. J. Eysenck,
Sense and Non-
sense in Psychology, Baltimore [1957], Ch. 8).
The problem of explaining our perception of beauty
(or our experience of
kalistic pleasure) has tempted few
psychologists, and is generally thought
to remain un-
solved. During the first decades
of this century, the
Empathy Theory was widely accepted. First ex-
pounded by Theodor Lipps in his Aesthetik (2 vols.,
Hamburg and Leipzig, 1903-06),
the theory was de-
veloped and popularized by
Vernon Lee (Violet Paget),
in The Beautiful
(Cambridge and New York, 1913) and
Herbert S. Langfeld, The Aesthetic Attitude (New York,
1920). The primary purpose of
the Empathy Theory
was to explain the expressiveness of visual forms
in
terms of the unconscious transference of the perceiver's
activities
to the object (something in the mountain as
seen activates our tendency to
rise, and so we see
mountain as “rising”); when the
empathic response is
highly unified and quite uninhibited and
unchecked,
beauty is experienced. The hypothesis was never veri-
fied, and serious difficulties were raised
as a result of
some experiments. The satisfaction taken in perceiving
ordered patterns of visual stimuli has been explained
by the Gestalt
psychologists in terms of phenomenal
“requiredness”
and “good gestalts” (see, for example,
Kurt Koffka,
“Problems in the Psychology of Art,” in
Art: A Bryn Mawr Symposium, Bryn Mawr, Pa., 1940);
but Gestalt psychologists have generally not given
special attention to
beauty.
