Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics

The Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) investigates why and how people create art and how they perform, experience, and evaluate it. The Institutes focus is on music, but we also engage with other performing arts such as dance and film. The MPIEA explores the underlying genetic, biological, and psychological processes that underlie the production and perception of art, as well as their interaction with the cultural, social, and historical factors and functions of aesthetic practices and discourses. The research focuses primarily on the foundations of aesthetic evaluation, perception and experience. Key topics include: * the nature of aesthetic pleasure and the different types of aesthetic appeal and aesthetic emotions; * the cognitive and affective mechanisms involved in aesthetic perception and their neural, physiological and behavioral correlates; * the motivational implications and consequences of aesthetic liking (tendencies to seek prolonged and/or repea...