A team of Cambridge psychologists conducted an experiment to compare the cognitive (认知的) effects of merely seeing art with actively judging how beautiful it is.
In the study, 187 people were invited to visit Kettle’s Yard gallery during an exhibition of handmade clay objects. Participants were randomly divided into two groups: the “beauty” group was asked to actively consider and then rate the beauty of each object they viewed, while the control group just matched a line drawing of the object with the artwork itself. All participants were then tested on how they process information, and whether it’s in a more practical or abstract way.
Across all participants, those in the beauty group scored almost 14% higher on average than the control group in abstract thinking. While they were told the study was about cognitive processes, participants were asked about interests, with around half saying they had an artistic hobby. Among those, the effect was greater: those with an artistic hobby in the beauty group scored over 25% higher on average for abstract thinking than those with an artistic hobby in the control group.
Emotional states of participants were also measured by asking about their feelings while completing the gallery task. Across all participants, those in the beauty group reported an average of 23% higher levels of “transformative and self-transcendent feelings” — such as feeling moved, enlightened and inspired — than the control group. Importantly, however, the beauty group did not report feeling any happier than the control group, suggesting that it was the engagement with beauty that influenced abstract thinking, rather than any overall positivity from the experience.
“We usually think in very concrete terms when doing something on a screen,” said Simone Schnall, senior author of the study. “It’s becoming much rarer to zone out and just let the mind wander, but that’s when we think in ways that broaden our minds. Admiring the beauty of art may be the ideal way to initiate the abstract cognitive processes.”
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【详解】 推理判断题。根据第四段中的“Emotional states of participants were also measured by asking about their feelings while completing the gallery task. Across all participants, those in the beauty group reported an average of 23% higher levels of “transformative and self-transcendent feelings” — such as feeling moved, enlightened and inspired — than the control group. Importantly, however, the beauty group did not report feeling any happier than the control group, suggesting that it was the engagement with beauty that influenced abstract thinking, rather than any overall positivity from the experience.(研究人员还通过询问受试者在参观美术馆任务过程中的内心感受，测评了他们的情绪状态。在全部受试者里，美感组汇报的“蜕变感与自我超越感”（例如心生触动、豁然开悟、备受鼓舞等感受）平均分值，比对照组高出23%。但关键的一点是，美感组并未表示自己比对照组更快乐。这就说明，是对美的感知体验影响了抽象思维能力，而非这段经历带来的整体积极情绪在起作用。)”可知，研究者通过检测情绪，排除了积极情绪干扰，找到了造成两组测试分数差距的真实原因，也就是确定测试结果背后的影响因素。