“Aesthetic activities and aesthetic attitudes: Influences on education, background and personality on interest and involvement in the arts.” I.C. McManus and A. Furnham, British Journal of Psychology (2006), No. 97, pp. 555-587.
The Article
The authors offer statistical analysis of aesthetic activities, attitudes and personality. McManus and Furnham (2006) note there have been very few studies on aesthetic appreciation of the arts: “one of the surprising things is how little they have been investigated by psychology and the behavioral sciences” (pp. 555-556). Detailing summaries of those studies that have investigated the arts and artistic personalities – including on the relationship between psychopathology and artists – with the exception of the work of Pierre Bourdieu in the late 1960s and other research, there is limited research on the appreciation of art by those that appreciate it. There is relevant literature on “the relationship between the individual difference variable of sensation-seeking and various measure of interest in art,” which nonetheless fails to understand the aesthetic attitudes of those that engage in aesthetic activities (McManus & Furman 2006, p. 556). Thus, the authors approach survey research on aesthetic attitudes and activities according to the five variables commonly understood as the underlying factors of personality, which are extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience (to which they add a fifth variable of masculinity due to the recent interest in the relationship between it and the arts in some schools of psychology).
After additional review of the studies that have researched the relationship between the arts and personality, McManus and Furham (2006) detail their method (as part of a laboratory class assignment where students were asked to find participants to complete the survey). The questionnaire used contained attitude questions and questions on demographics, education and social background, then questions on aesthetic attitudes and a brief measure of personality dimensions (adapted to include questions related to masculinity, as done by previous research studies). They provide information on the participants, statistical analysis and the results from 1,199 participants (89.3% of which had provided completed survey information for the study). The authors detail the descriptive statistics from the data collected on 17 activities from a 7-point scale, then discuss the correlations with personality for both aesthetic activities and attitudes, with attitudes operationally defined as anti-art, aesthetic inclusively, emotion and understanding, aesthetic relativism, aesthetic quality, and aesthetic attitude. Data analysis is done through a structural equation modeling. The models are defined by activities based on personality, education and demography, and then aesthetic attitudes followed by an overall comparison and measure of active vs. passive involvement in the arts.
Major findings of the research suggest that there is a wide range of participation in the specific activities where aesthetic activities and attitudes are “likely to be continually interacting over a period of time,” and individuals involved in one form of activity tend to be actively involved in another (McManus & Furham 2006, pp. 577-578). The findings also suggest that overall educational level has little effect on aesthetic activities, that a science education “has a large, direct negative effect on aesthetic activities, but it also has indirect effects due to those with a science education having less art education” (McManus & Furham 2006, p. 578). The authors further discuss the direct effects of a science education on artistic activity and attitudes, then address the fact that personality in general has a large effect on aesthetic activities (also noting the relationship with regards to masculinity). The authors conclude that the relationship between personality, aesthetic activities and attitudes is deserving of further work, particularly in relation to openness to experience, maintaining that longitudinal studies are necessary to understand the complexities of the causal pathways between personality and aesthetic interests.
Reflection
The article is one that immediately piqued my interests because it approached the arts through a technical science, and did so in the name of aesthetics and a positive attitude toward the arts (rather than investigating the pathology of artists, for example, etc.). The conclusions suggesting that there is no link between neurosis and artistic activity and aesthetic appreciation – despite the conventional view of the artist as neurotic – was re-assuring as I thought to myself “well that’s a good thing” in a joking sort of way. My background is not personality, nor can I profess high-level knowledge of statistics, but the article was accessible and engaged an interest to investigate the area of personality psychology. Even more so, structural modeling interests me. As a graduate student with primarily a background in qualitative and theory-based research, I have begun statistics classes with limited knowledge of quantitative research (but with advanced knowledge of learning theory in correlation with the philosophy of science). Structural modeling begins to answer my many questions pondering what if, but, and, then how . . . when studying statistics. The discussion of causality and the difficulties of determining causal relationships are particularly relevant in this respect, wherewith analysis of aesthetic activities and attitudes – I think simply made the article quite aesthetic itself.
Any technical paper that references Tolstoy also unquestionably deserves to be on a favorite reading list. Noting Tolstoy’s belief that it is a mistake to think only in terms of the appreciation of “high art,” where the research encourages a broad definition of the arts is certainly respectable. As in quoting Tolstoy, “all human life is filled with works of art of every kind” (as cited in McManus & Furham 2006, p. 577). Needless to say, the inclusion of masculinity as a variable for personality was head-scratching to me, not because I question the authors’ intent (without exhausting an analysis of their use of the variable) but because I question the possible misinterpretations and misreading of the use of the variable. It seems the authors’ intent and research findings do prevent misunderstandings, but it is an aspect of the research worth reflecting upon further, given that “most artists throughout history have tended to be males, a difference only slightly diminished in the 20th and 21st centuries” (McManus & Furham 2006, p. 579). Nonetheless and overall, I was pleased and inspired to find such constructive creativity between art and science. At the same time, it gave me better perspective on both personality and statistics.
