Pondering artistic beauty encourages ‘big picture’ thinking, study finds

Since the dawn of philosophy, thinkers from Plato to Kant have considered how beauty affects human experience, and whether it has the power to transform our state of mind.

Now, a new study from the University of Cambridge suggests that stopping to contemplate the beauty of artistic objects in a gallery or museum boosts our ability to think in abstract ways and consider the “bigger picture” when it comes to our lives.

Researchers say the findings offer empirical evidence that engaging with artistic beauty helps us escape the “mental trappings of daily life,” such as current anxieties and to-do lists, and induce “psychological distancing”: the process of zooming out on your thoughts to gain clarity.

A team of Cambridge psychologists conducted an experiment using the University’s modern art gallery, Kettle’s Yard, as a “living laboratory” to compare the cognitive effects of merely seeing art with actively judging how beautiful it is.

Researchers found that study participants who focused on the beauty of objects in an exhibition of ceramics were more likely to experience elevated psychological states enabling them to think “beyond the here and now”, and more likely to report feeling enlightened, moved, or transformed. 

This was compared to participants who were simply asked to look intently at the artistic objects to match them with a series of line drawings. The findings are published today in the journal Empirical Studies of the Arts.

The study, among the first to explore how aesthetic experiences in a gallery or museum can affect cognitive processing, reinforces the importance of art creation as well as providing access to artistic spaces across communities, say researchers.

“Many philosophers throughout history have suggested that engaging with aesthetic beauty invokes a special kind of psychological state,” said Prof Simone Schnall, senior author of the study and Professor of Experimental Social Psychology at Cambridge.

“Our research indicates that engaging with the beauty of art can enhance abstract thinking and promote a different mindset to our everyday patterns of thought, shifting us into a more expansive state of mind.”

“This is known as psychological distancing, when one snaps out of the mental trappings of daily life and focuses more on the overall picture.”

“Visiting an art museum is not just a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, it may actually change how we think about our lives,” said Schnall, who is also director of the Cambridge Body, Mind, and Behaviour Laboratory.

For the latest study, 187 people were recruited to visit Kettle’s Yard gallery during an exhibition of handmade clay objects by pottery artist Lucie Rie.

“Ceramics were ideal for our purposes,” said Schnall. “A glorious painting by an Old Master would be too striking. We needed art that is subtle in form, requiring a focused contemplation of the nature of beauty.”   

Participants were randomly split into two groups: the ‘beauty’ group was asked to actively consider and then rate the beauty of each ceramic object they viewed, while the second group just matched a line drawing of the object with the artwork itself.

All participants were then tested on how they process information, and if it’s in a more practical or abstract way. For example, does ‘writing a letter’ mean literally putting pen to paper or sharing your thoughts? Is ‘voting’ marking a ballot or influencing an election? Is ‘locking a door’ inserting a key or securing a house?

“These tests are designed to gauge whether a person is thinking in an immediate, procedural way, as we often do in our day-to-day lives, or is attuned to the deeper meaning and bigger picture of the actions they take,” said Dr Elzė Sigutė Mikalonytė, lead author of the study and a researcher at Cambridge’s Department of Psychology.

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. 

“Our findings offer empirical support for a long-standing philosophical idea that beauty appreciation can help people detach from their immediate practical concerns and adopt a broader, more abstract perspective,” said Mikalonytė.

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.

The latest study is part of a wider project led by Schnall exploring the effects of aesthetic experiences on cognition. The project, supported by the Templeton Religion Trust, aims to address whether art can contribute to human flourishing and positive values.

“People today are often tethered to their devices, and we usually think in very concrete terms when we’re doing something on a screen,” added Schnall.

“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 horizons. Admiring the beauty of art may be the ideal way to trigger the abstract cognitive processes increasingly lost in a world of screens and smartphones.”

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