Consuming art can add rich benefits to the human experience. Menninghaus et al.‘s exposition provides insights into an intriguing aspect of this phenomenon: art's capacity to make negative emotions enjoyable. Nonetheless, the notion of meaning as a vehicle for transforming negative emotions into positive ones is overly simplistic. This process may exist, but it is unlikely to be commonplace because of the nature of meaning and the forms of art likely to engender attempts to find meaning.
First, the notion that positive emotions flow when people find meaning in an event or stimulus has intuitive appeal, but recent analyses suggest a more complicated relationship. We studied happiness and meaning in life to assess their unique contribution to everyday feelings, concerns, and self-assessments (Baumeister et al. Reference Baumeister, Vohs, Aaker and Garbinsky2013). People rated how happy their lives are and, separately, how meaningful. We statistically removed the influence of happiness from meaning assessments and meaning from happiness assessments, thereby creating two “pure” residual variables representing each construct absent of the other. In contrast to Menninghaus et al.’s notions, meaningfulness was distinctly related to feeling stressed, worried, and anxious. These are not positive feelings. Meaningful engagements are more closely tied to negative emotions than the authors acknowledge.
Second, Menninghaus et al. neglected to delve into the qualities of artworks that encourage a search for meaning. We studied artworks of just that kind and contrasted them with artworks that demand less in the way of meaning analysis (Hagtvedt & Vohs Reference Hagtvedt and Vohs2017). Using visual art that is easy versus challenging to immediately comprehend, we found patterns that conflict with the hypothesized relations asserted by Menninghaus et al. Our work showed that when art is easily comprehended, and therefore requires little meaning assessment, it stimulates positive feelings of happiness. In contrast, challenging art enhances the sense that life is meaningful.
Challenging artworks display elements that can be combined in intricate, ambiguous, or non-obvious manners. These are the formal qualities discussed by Menninghaus et al. When lines, shapes, and colors interact in a perceptually challenging painting, they form a complex but cohesive visual image that engages the mind more than a simpler depiction does (Lacey et al. Reference Lacey, Hagtvedt, Patrick, Anderson, Stilla, Deshpande, Hu, Sato, Reddy and Sathian2011).
Our work illuminated two processes by which challenging art adds meaning (Hagtvedt and Vohs Reference Hagtvedt and Vohs2017). The first step is when art inspires exploratory, interconnected thoughts, which we conceptualized as integrative complexity (Tetlock et al. Reference Tetlock, Bernzweig and Gallant1985). Integrative complexity is a way of thinking that encompasses both diversity in thoughts and reactions and coherence into a cogent whole. The formal qualities of challenging artworks were ideal for testing whether they inspire the experience of meaning in life through boosting integrative complexity. Our findings supported this notion. Challenging art, more so than straightforward art, elicited diverse reactions that were combined in new, non-obvious manners.
The second step of the process by which challenging artworks add to life's meaning was by provoking feelings of interest. Interest is an appraisal-based feeling akin to curiosity that arises from the perception of comprehensible novelty or complexity (Silvia Reference Silvia2008). We found that challenging art, more than simplistic art, led to feelings of interest, and interest, in turn, changed perceptions that life has meaning (Hagtvedt and Vohs Reference Hagtvedt and Vohs2017). Notably, interest is independent of pleasantness (Silvia Reference Silvia2008), which comports well with the aforementioned work demonstrating that experiencing pleasure tends to increase happiness, whereas meaningfulness is about engagement in meaty events and activities (Baumeister et al. Reference Baumeister, Vohs, Aaker and Garbinsky2013). These two complementary findings converge to imply that finding meaning in art is better characterized by interest rather than pleasure.
The role of integrative complexity and interest in evoking a sense of meaningfulness underscores that the value of art is not reducible to simply feeling good. Art contributes to people's lives because it encourages an expanding scope of experience. As Menninghaus et al. argued, negative emotions can be attenuated or cast in a positive light when people reappraise the negative emotion content. Nevertheless, negative emotions may be an integral, unavoidable component of much of the art that broadens the mind and contributes to life's meaningfulness.
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Consuming art can add rich benefits to the human experience. Menninghaus et al.‘s exposition provides insights into an intriguing aspect of this phenomenon: art's capacity to make negative emotions enjoyable. Nonetheless, the notion of meaning as a vehicle for transforming negative emotions into positive ones is overly simplistic. This process may exist, but it is unlikely to be commonplace because of the nature of meaning and the forms of art likely to engender attempts to find meaning.
First, the notion that positive emotions flow when people find meaning in an event or stimulus has intuitive appeal, but recent analyses suggest a more complicated relationship. We studied happiness and meaning in life to assess their unique contribution to everyday feelings, concerns, and self-assessments (Baumeister et al. Reference Baumeister, Vohs, Aaker and Garbinsky2013). People rated how happy their lives are and, separately, how meaningful. We statistically removed the influence of happiness from meaning assessments and meaning from happiness assessments, thereby creating two “pure” residual variables representing each construct absent of the other. In contrast to Menninghaus et al.’s notions, meaningfulness was distinctly related to feeling stressed, worried, and anxious. These are not positive feelings. Meaningful engagements are more closely tied to negative emotions than the authors acknowledge.
Second, Menninghaus et al. neglected to delve into the qualities of artworks that encourage a search for meaning. We studied artworks of just that kind and contrasted them with artworks that demand less in the way of meaning analysis (Hagtvedt & Vohs Reference Hagtvedt and Vohs2017). Using visual art that is easy versus challenging to immediately comprehend, we found patterns that conflict with the hypothesized relations asserted by Menninghaus et al. Our work showed that when art is easily comprehended, and therefore requires little meaning assessment, it stimulates positive feelings of happiness. In contrast, challenging art enhances the sense that life is meaningful.
Challenging artworks display elements that can be combined in intricate, ambiguous, or non-obvious manners. These are the formal qualities discussed by Menninghaus et al. When lines, shapes, and colors interact in a perceptually challenging painting, they form a complex but cohesive visual image that engages the mind more than a simpler depiction does (Lacey et al. Reference Lacey, Hagtvedt, Patrick, Anderson, Stilla, Deshpande, Hu, Sato, Reddy and Sathian2011).
Our work illuminated two processes by which challenging art adds meaning (Hagtvedt and Vohs Reference Hagtvedt and Vohs2017). The first step is when art inspires exploratory, interconnected thoughts, which we conceptualized as integrative complexity (Tetlock et al. Reference Tetlock, Bernzweig and Gallant1985). Integrative complexity is a way of thinking that encompasses both diversity in thoughts and reactions and coherence into a cogent whole. The formal qualities of challenging artworks were ideal for testing whether they inspire the experience of meaning in life through boosting integrative complexity. Our findings supported this notion. Challenging art, more so than straightforward art, elicited diverse reactions that were combined in new, non-obvious manners.
The second step of the process by which challenging artworks add to life's meaning was by provoking feelings of interest. Interest is an appraisal-based feeling akin to curiosity that arises from the perception of comprehensible novelty or complexity (Silvia Reference Silvia2008). We found that challenging art, more than simplistic art, led to feelings of interest, and interest, in turn, changed perceptions that life has meaning (Hagtvedt and Vohs Reference Hagtvedt and Vohs2017). Notably, interest is independent of pleasantness (Silvia Reference Silvia2008), which comports well with the aforementioned work demonstrating that experiencing pleasure tends to increase happiness, whereas meaningfulness is about engagement in meaty events and activities (Baumeister et al. Reference Baumeister, Vohs, Aaker and Garbinsky2013). These two complementary findings converge to imply that finding meaning in art is better characterized by interest rather than pleasure.
The role of integrative complexity and interest in evoking a sense of meaningfulness underscores that the value of art is not reducible to simply feeling good. Art contributes to people's lives because it encourages an expanding scope of experience. As Menninghaus et al. argued, negative emotions can be attenuated or cast in a positive light when people reappraise the negative emotion content. Nevertheless, negative emotions may be an integral, unavoidable component of much of the art that broadens the mind and contributes to life's meaningfulness.