In a series of studies, we analyze the cognitive, affective and aesthetic dimensions of experiencing beauty throughout different modalities (visual, auditive aesthetics) and domains (nature, the individual arts, fashion, and others). Unlike in philosophical aesthetics, beauty remains the preeminent category in empirical aesthetics, most notably so in neuroscientific studies. The subjective experience of beauty, however, has only scarcely been the object of both empirical and comparative research (visual vs. auditory beauty, beauty in nature vs. beauty in art, etc.). Our project focuses on these experiential qualia, as well as on how they correlate with particular object properties.

• Thomas Jacobsen (Hamburg)
• Klaus Scherer (Geneva)