Beauty and the busy mind: Occupied working memory resources impair aesthetic experiences in everyday life.

ABSTRACT: Aesthetic experiences have been distinguished from other experiences based on an aesthetic mode of processing that often entails concentrating working memory resources on the aesthetic stimulus. Since working memory is a limited-capacity system, there should be a trade-off between available resources and the aesthetic experience. To test whether the intensity of the aesthetic experience is reduced if working memory resources are otherwise occupied, we employed an experience sampling method. One hundred and fifteen undergraduate students (45% female; Mage = 23.50 years, SD = 2.72 years) participated in a 2-week experience sampling study and furnished a total of 15,047 reports of their aesthetic experiences. As measures of current working memory resources, participants answered questions reg

SUBMITTER: Weigand R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7954329 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature