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Here's Today's Feel-Good Story:
Consuming and appreciating art is something that people all over the world do, but the underlying mechanisms that art provokes remain poorly understood.
New research now shows how viewing visual art affects our emotions. Studying eye movement while viewing art and assessing the emotions of the viewers as they looked at the art helped with understanding how it affects our emotions.
“Viewing the art evoked many different kinds of feelings and emotions in people,” said Professor Lauri Nummenmaa from the Turku PET Centre at the University of Turku, Finland.
“Even though many of the pieces handled sad or scary topics, the emotions that the people experienced were mainly positive. The bodily sensations evoked by art also contributed to the emotions: the stronger the body’s reaction was to the artwork, the stronger were the emotions experienced by the subject,” he said.