The oldest surviving signs of art date back more than 100,000 years (Vanhaerren et al. Reference Vanhaerren, d'Errico, Stronger, James, Todd and Mienis2006). They are of shells drilled to make beads, presumably for necklaces. What are we to make of such forms in human evolution? The first stone tools were scrapers, which emerged more than three million years ago. Like other technologies they were meant for purposes in the outer world, but the more recently emergent necklaces had other purposes. We may hypothesize that they helped people fashion their identities, to transform themselves within.
The Roman poet Horace (19 BCE/Reference Fairclough1932) proposed that the purpose of poetry and, by implication, all art is to give pleasure and instruct. We can see how wearing a necklace can give pleasure, but in their article, Menninghaus et al. point out that much art involves emotions that are negative. In this case, how can the first part of Horace's proposal be right? Why do people listen to music, look at paintings, go to see plays and films, and read poems, short stories, and novels, which concern negative emotions and which evoke negative emotions in them?
Menninghaus et al. say that, first, people know that although a work of art is not real life, it is in the world, so they can separate it and hold it at a distance, while, in their own everyday life, they can remain, as the authors say, in control. Second, while in this state, they say that people can decide to embrace a work. It is a valuable idea that in engagement with art, we can feel both safe and able to embrace the new.
The proposal can also be taken as an invitation to go deeper. Collingwood (Reference Collingwood1938) argued that art is exploration of emotions that we don't yet understand. It involves an externalization of an aspect of mind in the form of a language that can be of words, of painting, of sculpture, of music, of dance, and so forth. The externalization of consciousness in such forms enables exploration of a kind that is more difficult when concerns remain internal.
The reason art explores negative emotions, such as sadness in losing a loved one, anger at having been let down, as well as anxiety, shame, and disappointment in response to other kinds of upsetting events, is that such emotions are of the kind which are usually the most difficult to understand, which therefore need the most exploration, and which can have the most far-reaching implications for us.
Djikic et al. (Reference Djikic, Oatley and Peterson2006) analyzed interviews of nine distinguished writers of fiction and nine distinguished physicists, using Pennebaker et al.'s (Reference Pennebaker, Francis and Booth2001) Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program. We predicted that the writers would use more emotion-related words as they discussed their work with interviewers, and this is what we found. We found, too, that as compared with the physicists, the writers used significantly more words related to negative emotions: anger, anxiety, depression, and sadness. As part of this study, we compared the interviews of the same nine physicists with a larger sample of interviews with 124 writers, and obtained similar results. So, in their work, literary artists have an inner preoccupation with negative emotions, which did not occur for physical scientists. This can be seen as confirmation of Collingwood's theory of art as exploration of emotions, with the addition that these emotions may often be negative.
In a piece of art that has been produced by someone else we, who engage with it, can also explore issues with which the artist is concerned – issues that can concern us, too. With a poem, short story, or novel, as with meditation, we can go to a quiet place and put aside concerns and preoccupations of daily life. For instance, by identification, we can take on the concerns and intentions of a literary character. Comparable processes occur with other art forms. In literary art, the emotions experienced are most often those of empathy with a character, in circumstances we may never have been in, but ones we can imagine. We may empathize with the character, but our emotions are not those of that imagined person. They are our own, in the circumstances of the story (Oatley Reference Oatley2016). In this way, we can lead many lives.
Menninghaus et al. ask whether greater emotional depth, with combinations of negative and positive emotions, might lead to greater dynamic change. We have explored this issue empirically. Djikic et al. (Reference Djikic, Oatley, Zoeterman and Peterson2009) asked people to read either a piece of art, Chekhov's (Reference Chekhov, Koteliansky and Cannan1899/1990) most famous short story, The Lady with the Toy Dog, or a control version that contained all of the same information, that was of the same length and reading difficulty, and that readers found just as interesting but not as artistic. Before and after reading, participants were given a test of personality, and also rated the intensity of 10 emotions they were currently feeling. As compared with those who read the control version, those who read Chekhov's story changed their personalities, significantly by small but measurable amounts, but not all in the same way. These participants changed in their own ways, and the changes were mediated by the amount of emotion change they experienced, across a range that included negative emotions, such as sadness, anxiety, and anger. Djikic et al. (Reference Djikic, Oatley and Carland2012) replicated the study with eight literary short stories and eight literary essays. Those who read a short story or essay that they rated as artistic changed their personalities, again idiosyncratically, in their own ways (see also Djikic & Oatley Reference Djikic and Oatley2014). The idea that relates, perhaps, to early necklaces, of art as potentially transformative, is here given further expression.
The proposals of Horace, that poetry and other arts function to give pleasure and instruct, seem to point in directions that are not as helpful as they might be. Is not the idea of art as exploration of emotional issues more informative than that of art as pleasure? Does not the finding that in reading literary art people can change in their own ways more psychologically suggestive than the idea that art is instruction?
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The oldest surviving signs of art date back more than 100,000 years (Vanhaerren et al. Reference Vanhaerren, d'Errico, Stronger, James, Todd and Mienis2006). They are of shells drilled to make beads, presumably for necklaces. What are we to make of such forms in human evolution? The first stone tools were scrapers, which emerged more than three million years ago. Like other technologies they were meant for purposes in the outer world, but the more recently emergent necklaces had other purposes. We may hypothesize that they helped people fashion their identities, to transform themselves within.
The Roman poet Horace (19 BCE/Reference Fairclough1932) proposed that the purpose of poetry and, by implication, all art is to give pleasure and instruct. We can see how wearing a necklace can give pleasure, but in their article, Menninghaus et al. point out that much art involves emotions that are negative. In this case, how can the first part of Horace's proposal be right? Why do people listen to music, look at paintings, go to see plays and films, and read poems, short stories, and novels, which concern negative emotions and which evoke negative emotions in them?
Menninghaus et al. say that, first, people know that although a work of art is not real life, it is in the world, so they can separate it and hold it at a distance, while, in their own everyday life, they can remain, as the authors say, in control. Second, while in this state, they say that people can decide to embrace a work. It is a valuable idea that in engagement with art, we can feel both safe and able to embrace the new.
The proposal can also be taken as an invitation to go deeper. Collingwood (Reference Collingwood1938) argued that art is exploration of emotions that we don't yet understand. It involves an externalization of an aspect of mind in the form of a language that can be of words, of painting, of sculpture, of music, of dance, and so forth. The externalization of consciousness in such forms enables exploration of a kind that is more difficult when concerns remain internal.
The reason art explores negative emotions, such as sadness in losing a loved one, anger at having been let down, as well as anxiety, shame, and disappointment in response to other kinds of upsetting events, is that such emotions are of the kind which are usually the most difficult to understand, which therefore need the most exploration, and which can have the most far-reaching implications for us.
Djikic et al. (Reference Djikic, Oatley and Peterson2006) analyzed interviews of nine distinguished writers of fiction and nine distinguished physicists, using Pennebaker et al.'s (Reference Pennebaker, Francis and Booth2001) Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program. We predicted that the writers would use more emotion-related words as they discussed their work with interviewers, and this is what we found. We found, too, that as compared with the physicists, the writers used significantly more words related to negative emotions: anger, anxiety, depression, and sadness. As part of this study, we compared the interviews of the same nine physicists with a larger sample of interviews with 124 writers, and obtained similar results. So, in their work, literary artists have an inner preoccupation with negative emotions, which did not occur for physical scientists. This can be seen as confirmation of Collingwood's theory of art as exploration of emotions, with the addition that these emotions may often be negative.
In a piece of art that has been produced by someone else we, who engage with it, can also explore issues with which the artist is concerned – issues that can concern us, too. With a poem, short story, or novel, as with meditation, we can go to a quiet place and put aside concerns and preoccupations of daily life. For instance, by identification, we can take on the concerns and intentions of a literary character. Comparable processes occur with other art forms. In literary art, the emotions experienced are most often those of empathy with a character, in circumstances we may never have been in, but ones we can imagine. We may empathize with the character, but our emotions are not those of that imagined person. They are our own, in the circumstances of the story (Oatley Reference Oatley2016). In this way, we can lead many lives.
Menninghaus et al. ask whether greater emotional depth, with combinations of negative and positive emotions, might lead to greater dynamic change. We have explored this issue empirically. Djikic et al. (Reference Djikic, Oatley, Zoeterman and Peterson2009) asked people to read either a piece of art, Chekhov's (Reference Chekhov, Koteliansky and Cannan1899/1990) most famous short story, The Lady with the Toy Dog, or a control version that contained all of the same information, that was of the same length and reading difficulty, and that readers found just as interesting but not as artistic. Before and after reading, participants were given a test of personality, and also rated the intensity of 10 emotions they were currently feeling. As compared with those who read the control version, those who read Chekhov's story changed their personalities, significantly by small but measurable amounts, but not all in the same way. These participants changed in their own ways, and the changes were mediated by the amount of emotion change they experienced, across a range that included negative emotions, such as sadness, anxiety, and anger. Djikic et al. (Reference Djikic, Oatley and Carland2012) replicated the study with eight literary short stories and eight literary essays. Those who read a short story or essay that they rated as artistic changed their personalities, again idiosyncratically, in their own ways (see also Djikic & Oatley Reference Djikic and Oatley2014). The idea that relates, perhaps, to early necklaces, of art as potentially transformative, is here given further expression.
The proposals of Horace, that poetry and other arts function to give pleasure and instruct, seem to point in directions that are not as helpful as they might be. Is not the idea of art as exploration of emotional issues more informative than that of art as pleasure? Does not the finding that in reading literary art people can change in their own ways more psychologically suggestive than the idea that art is instruction?