Beyond beauty How social context shapes artistic creation, reception, and impact

The psychological study of art has traditionally focused on bottom-up processes, examining how sensory systems respond to perceptual features in artworks. While newer models incorporate top-down influences like context, they often overlook the social dimensions that shape art’s creation and reception. Yet art is not just an individual experience—it is a medium through which we engage with others, challenge boundaries, and negotiate identities. This dissertation adopts a socio-contextualised approach to examine how social factors influence our responses to art.
Across three empirical chapters, I investigate: (1) how artists’ motives (intrinsic vs. extrinsic) affect audience appreciation, (2) how people respond to music they believe is created by humans vs. artificial intelligence (AI), and (3) whether impactful art can foster more positive attitudes toward immigrants by eliciting self-transcendent emotions.
In Chapter 2, intrinsic motives led to greater appreciation, warmth, and perceived lasting impact. Chapter 3 shows that AI-attributed music elicits not only lower appreciation but also greater physiological stress, especially among those who strongly value human creative uniqueness. Chapter 4 finds that recalling impactful art experiences reduces dehumanisation of immigrants, partly due to the evocation of self-transcendent emotions such as awe and feeling moved.
Together, these findings suggest that art is not merely an aesthetic object but a socially embedded phenomenon shaped by the motives, identities, and emotional experiences of both artists and audiences. Beyond advancing theory, this work offers practical implications for those working in the arts, encouraging greater consideration of the interpersonal forces that shape how art is received.