A 2024 study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that the way people engage with art is related to their sense of meaning in life.
Spurred from a desire to better quantify the value of art beyond aesthetic pleasure, researchers were curious to investigate art’s cognitive contributions, as well.
“I am broadly interested in studying meaning in life,” said the study’s author, Joshua A. Wilt, a senior research associate at Case Western Reserve University, in a statement.
“I’m also interested in how involvement with art may result in deeper existential and spiritual understandings. It seemed that the logic underlying the overarching hypothesis of this project was a merging of those interests: If art can lead to increased understanding, perhaps specific experiences with art would relate to higher levels of meaning in life.”
To test this hypothesis, Wilt and his team conducted two studies.
The first included 300 participants equally split into three samples: undergraduate students with some art experience, students interested in art, and individuals affiliated with art schools and art organizations.
Participants took an online study that measured their levels of interest in art and also included a “Multidimensional Existential Meaning Scale” to measure their overall sense of meaning in life.
The survey assessed knowledge about art, as well as things like the importance of religious beliefs in a person’s daily life, which could influence the primary relationships being studied.
The second study recruited a larger and more diverse sample of over 1,800 participants, with a wide range of art experience. These participants took the same survey.
Researchers found that a deep connection to art — especially for those with ties to the art industry — correlated highly with their sense of meaning in life.
This suggests that art expertise results in an even more significant sense of meaning and purpose.
“I was surprised that awe emerged as a much stronger predictor of meaning in the sample of artists with high levels of formal training as compared to the other samples in Study 1,” Wilt told PsyPost.
Wilt said he hopes to continue to study other variables, but “ultimately,” he said, “I think that this is a starting point for understanding how involvement with art may contribute to more meaningful lives, which could be practically significant, and maybe particularly so in clinical and counseling settings.”
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A version of this article was originally published in The 2024 Art Edition of the Goodnewspaper.
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