Anjan Chatterjee

• University of Pennsylvania

We present a comprehensive data set of digitized artworks designed for empirical aesthetics research. This database uniquely includes artwork from underrepresented cultures—Mexican/Central and South American, African, and Middle Eastern and South Asian—and covers subcategories of Western Art, such as Euro-American Modern, American-Public Art, and E...

Human appearance has a profound impact on behavior and psychological disposition, with faces being among the most salient visual stimuli encountered. People form judgements about others’ inner traits based on physical features in seconds, potentially reinforcing biases such as the “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype. In this preregistered study, we teste...

Public enthusiasm for the arts is high, a trend reflected in the increasingly commonplace incorporation of art in healthcare settings to enhance patient health and wellbeing. The primary aim of this critical narrative review is to evaluate the evidence for the health benefits of the most common art intervention in healthcare—visual art in the built...

As cultural consumption increasingly moves to a digital space, it is crucial to understand the evolving landscape of art consumption both in and outside of a physical museum context. The current study delves into this contrast, seeking to understand how art is perceived and appreciated in museums and on a digital medium (like a computer screen). Ac...

As cultural consumption increasingly moves to a digital space, it is crucial to understand the evolving landscape of art consumption both in and outside of a physical museum context. The current study delves into this contrast, seeking to understand how art is perceived and appreciated in museums and on a digital medium (like a computer screen). Ac...

As cultural consumption increasingly moves to a digital space, it is crucial to understand the evolving landscape of art consumption both in and outside of a physical museum context. The current study delves into this contrast, seeking to understand how art is perceived and appreciated in museums and on a digital medium (like a computer screen). Ac...

Paul Locher passed away on 20 August 2024. Paul was an outstanding scientist and a central figure in the field of empirical aesthetics. He made important contributions to numerous areas including the study of symmetry, balance, facial attractiveness, museum behaviour, artwork composition and restoration, and aesthetics of food, but in particular to...

A glance is enough to assign psychological attributes to others. Attractiveness is associated with positive attributes (‘beauty‐is‐good’ stereotype). Here, we raise the question of a similar but negative bias. Are people with facial anomalies associated with negative personal characteristics? We hypothesized that biases against faces with anomalies...

As cultural consumption increasingly moves to a digital space, it is crucial to understand the evolving landscape of art consumption both in and outside of a physical museum context. The current study delves into this contrast, seeking to understand how art is perceived and appreciated in museums and on a digital medium (like a computer screen). Ac...

Background Facial areas attracting the most visual attention in Hemifacial Microsomia (HFM) are poorly understood. Further, it is not clear if and how visual attention changes from pre- to post-operatively. This study characterized layperson visual attention to pre- and post-reconstruction hemifacial microsomia (HFM) using eye-tracking technology....

Aesthetic emotions are defined as emotions arising when a person evaluates a stimulus for its aesthetic appeal. Whether these emotions are unique to aesthetic activities is debated. We address this debate by examining if recollections of different types of engaging activities entail different emotional profiles. A large sample of participants were...

Among the disabling post-traumatic stress (PTS) symptoms are irritability, aggressive behavior, distressing memories and general impaired cognition and negative mood. Art therapy interventions, including mask-making, can potentially alleviate these symptoms. We tested the hypothesis that art conveys emotions and predicted that blinded viewers would...

Introduction: Dementia cases are expected to rise to 81.1 million in 2040. Efforts are underway to develop diagnostic methods to facilitate early detection of the disease. Herein we review research findings focusing on pragmatic dysfunction in patients with dementia and evaluate the usefulness of assessing dementia and its progress with a battery...

The “scarred villain” trope, where facial differences like scars signify moral corruption, is ubiquitous in film (e.g., Batman’s The Joker). Strides by advocacy groups to undermine the trope, however, suggest cinematic representations of facial differences could be improving with time. This preregistered study characterized facial differences in fi...

Background: Facial attractiveness influences our perceptions of others, with beautiful faces reaping societal rewards and anomalous faces encountering penalties. The purpose of this study was to determine associations of visual attention with bias and social dispositions toward people with facial anomalies. Methods: Sixty subjects completed tests e...

Background: Facial attractiveness influences our perceptions of others, with beautiful faces reaping societal rewards and anomalous faces encountering penalties. The purpose of this study was to determine associations of visual attention with bias and social dispositions toward people with facial anomalies. Methods: Sixty subjects completed test...

A glance is enough for people to assign psychological attributes to another person. Attractiveness is associated with positive attributes contributing to the “beauty-is-good” stereotype. Here, we aimed to study the possibility of a similar but negative bias. Specifically, we asked if people with facial anomalies are associated with negative charact...

Curiosity, creativity, and aesthetics are typically studied separately. The extent to which they share psychological and neural mechanisms is not well understood, despite all being linked to broader personality characteristics like Openness to Experience and are driven by a desire for information and knowledge. Here, we review evidence and advance...

Aesthetic cognitivism refers to the proposition that art promotes knowledge and understanding. Despite its intuitive appeal, few empirical investigations have tested the validity of this philosophical claim. In our review, we outline prior arguments for and against aesthetic cognitivism. Then, with a focus on visual art, we discuss how empirical ae...

Background: This study tested the core tenets of how facial scars are perceived by characterizing layperson response to faces with scars. The authors predicted that scars closer to highly viewed structures of the face (i.e., upper lip and lower lid), scars aligned against resting facial tension lines, and scars in the middle of anatomical subunits...

Background: Facial proportionality and symmetry are positively associated with perceived levels of facial attractiveness.Objective: The aims of this study were to confirm and extend the association of proportionality with perceived levels of attractiveness and character traits and determine differences in attractiveness and character ratings betwee...

What kinds of impacts can visual art have on a viewer? To identify potential art impacts, we recruited five aesthetics experts from different academic disciplines: art history, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology and theology. Together, the group curated a set of terms that corresponded to descriptive features (124 terms) and cognitive‐affective i...

Recent work on the aesthetics of the built and natural environment has shown that aesthetic responses are derived from three interrelated psychological dimensions: Fascination (an environment's richness or interest), Coherence (analytic judgments about an environment's organization and construction), and Hominess (feelings of warmth or coziness). H...

The relationship between aesthetics and morality has been long debated. The current study manipulated perceived artist morality to systematically explore its influence on aesthetic judgments of paintings. Experiment 1 showed perceived artist morality as indicated by moral appraisal significantly influenced Chinese participants’ aesthetic judgments...

Purpose: This study tested the core tenets of how facial scars are perceived by characterizing layperson response to faces with scars. We predicted that scars closer to highly viewed structures of the face (i.e., upper lip and lower lid), scars aligned against resting facial tension lines, and scars in the middle of anatomic subunits of the face w...

Public attitudes towards cognitive enhancement-e.g., using stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin to improve mental functioning-are mixed. Attitudes vary by context and prompt ethical concerns about fairness, obligation, and authenticity/character. While people may have strong views about the morality of cognitive enhancement, how these views are aff...

Aesthetic cognitivism is the philosophical position that art can advance knowledge and understanding. Operationalizing the claim of aesthetic cognitivism is necessary to put this philosophical view to test empirically. In pursuit of this goal, we recruited five aesthetics experts from different academic disciplines: art history, neuroscience, philo...

There is a notion that mathematical equations can be considered aesthetic objects. However, whereas some aesthetic experiences are triggered primarily by the sensory properties of objects, for mathematical equations aesthetic judgments extend beyond their sensory qualities and are also informed by semantics and knowledge. Therefore, to the extent t...

Background: Facial proportionality and symmetry are positively associated with perceived levels of facial attractiveness. Objective: The aims of this study were to confirm and extend the association of proportionality with perceived levels of attractiveness and character traits and determine differences in attractiveness and character ratings be...

People have an “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype whereby they make negative inferences about the moral character of people with craniofacial anomalies like scars. This stereotype is hypothesized to be a byproduct of adaptations for avoiding pathogens. However, evidence for the anomalous-is-bad stereotype comes from studies of European and North America...

This pre-registered study (https://osf.io/b9g6v) tested the hypothesis that implicit biases towards people with visible facial differences, like scars and palsies, can be reduced through routine exposure to faces bearing such anomalous features. Participants’ implicit biases were measured before and after they completed one of two exposure interven...

Studying the two main components of well-being—hedonia and eudaimonia—can shed insight into its psychological and neural aspects. This chapter begins by highlighting how neuroscience research in two related domains—creativity and meditation—has been useful. Then, the authors review the extant neuroscientific research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-...

The Oxford Handbook of the Positive Humanities is the foundational scientific reference for the new and rapidly growing field of the Positive Humanities, an emerging interdisciplinary domain of inquiry and practice focused on the arts and humanities in relation to human flourishing. This Handbook comprises 38 chapters authored by nearly 70 leading...

Humans are deeply affected by stories, yet it is unclear how. In this study, we explored two aspects of aesthetic experiences during narrative engagement-literariness and narrative fluctuations in appraised emotional intensity. Independent ratings of literariness and emotional intensity of two literary stories were used to predict blood-oxygen-leve...

People have an “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype whereby they make negative inferences about the moral character of people with craniofacial anomalies like scars. This stereotype is hypothesized to be a byproduct of adaptations for avoiding pathogens. However, evidence for the anomalous-is-bad stereotype comes from studies of European and North America...

People have an “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype whereby they make negative inferences about the moral character of people with craniofacial anomalies like scars. This stereotype is hypothesized to be a byproduct of adaptations for avoiding pathogens. However, evidence for the anomalous-is-bad stereotype comes from studies of European and North America...

Neuroscience joins the long history of discussions about aesthetics in psychology, philosophy, art history, and the creative arts. In this volume, leading scholars in this nascent field reflect on the promise of neuroaesthetics to enrich our understanding of this universal yet diverse facet of human experience. The volume will inform and stimulate...

Art promotes knowledge and understanding. Philosophers have debated this proposition, which is referred to as aesthetic cognitivism. Despite its intuitive appeal, few empirical investigations have tested the validity of this claim. In our review, we outline philosophical arguments for and against aesthetic cognitivism. Then, we discuss how empirica...

The Action-sentence Compatibility Effect (ACE) is a well-known demonstration of the role of motor activity in the comprehension of language. Participants are asked to make sensibility judgments on sentences by producing movements toward the body or away from the body. The ACE is the finding that movements are faster when the direction of the moveme...

How does aging affect facial attractiveness? We tested the hypothesis that people find older faces less attractive than younger faces, and furthermore, that these aging effects are modulated by the age and sex of the perceiver and by the specific kind of attractiveness judgment being made. Using empirical and computational network science methods,...

Hedonic evaluation of sensory objects varies from person to person. While this variability has been linked to differences in experience, little is known about why stimuli lead to different evaluations in different people. We used linear mixed‐effects models to determine the extent to which the openness, contour, and ceiling height of interior space...

How does aging affect facial attractiveness? We tested the hypothesis that people find older faces less attractive than younger faces, and furthermore, that these aging effects are modulated by the age and sex of the perceiver and by the specific kind of attractiveness judgment being made. Using empirical and computational network science methods,...

Beauty and wellness are terms used often in common parlance, however their meaning and relation to each other is unclear. To probe their meaning, we applied network science methods to estimate and compare the semantic networks associated with beauty and wellness in different age generation cohorts (Generation Z, Millennials, Generation X, and Baby...

Preference for architectural interiors can be explained using three psychological dimensions: Coherence (ease for organizing and comprehending a scene), Fascination (a scene's informational richness and generated interest), and Hominess (how much a space feels personal). We tested the hypothesis that their contributions to preference might vary bas...

People frequently form aesthetic judgements of built and natural environments. Identifying psychological responses induced by one's surroundings – as well as differences across contexts – is necessary to better access salubrious qualities of different natural and built environments. Here, we tested two primary hypotheses about responses to exterior...

Investigators increasingly need high quality face photographs that they can use in service of their scholarly pursuits—whether serving as experimental stimuli or to benchmark face recognition algorithms. Up to now, an index of known face databases, their features, and how to access them has not been available. This absence has had at least two nega...

Background Sensitive measures of cognition are needed in preclinical and prodromal Alzheimer’s disease (AD) to track cognitive change and evaluate potential interventions. Neurofibrillary tangle pathology in AD is first observed in Brodmann Area 35 (BA35), the medial portion of the perirhinal cortex. The importance of the perirhinal cortex for sema...

Visual art offers cognitive neuroscience an opportunity to study how subjective value is constructed from representations supported by multiple neural systems. A surprising finding in aesthetic judgment research is the functional activation of motor areas in response to static, abstract stimuli, like paintings, which has been hypothesized to reflec...

Hedonic evaluation of sensory objects varies from person to person. While this variability has been linked to differences in experience and personality traits, little is known about why stimuli lead to different evaluations in different people. We used linear mixed effect models to determine the extent to which the openness, contour, and ceiling he...

Are people with flawed faces regarded as having flawed moral characters? An “anomalous‐is‐bad” stereotype is hypothesized to facilitate negative biases against people with facial anomalies (e.g., scars), but whether and how these biases affect behavior and brain functioning remain open questions. We examined responses to anomalous faces in the brai...

To successfully move through the world, the brain constructs spatial representations that situate the body within the environment. Communicating spatial directions poses specific challenges to this process, in part because the format through which the information is communicated must be interpreted to match the visual scene the navigator is viewing...

We explored two aspects of aesthetic experiences during narrative engagement - literariness and emotional intensity. Independent ratings of literariness and emotional intensity of two literary stories were used to predict blood oxygen-level-dependent signal changes in 52 listeners from an existing fMRI dataset. Literariness was associated with incr...

People vary widely in their acceptance of the use of pharmacological cognitive enhancement (CE). We tested the hypothesis that the acceptability of CE is malleable, by varying the context in which CE use takes place, by framing the use of CE with positive and negative metaphors, and by distinguishing between self and other CE use. 2,519 US-based pa...

Despite the ubiquity of metaphor in cognition and communication, it is absent from standard clinical assessments of language, and the neural systems that support metaphor processing are debated. Previous research shows that patients with focal brain lesions can display selective impairments in processing metaphor, suggesting that figurative languag...

Despite the ubiquity of metaphor in cognition and communication, it is absent from standard clinical assessments of language, and the neural systems that support metaphor processing are debated. Previous research shows that patients with focal brain lesions can display selective impairments in processing metaphor, suggesting that figurative languag...

Sensitive measures of cognition are needed in preclinical and prodromal Alzheimer’s disease (AD) to track cognitive change and evaluate potential interventions. We hypothesize that measures of semantic richness and figurative language are sensitive to cognitive impairment in prodromal AD. The neurofibrillary tangle (NFT) pathology of AD is first ob...

There is increasing demand by investigators for high quality face photographs they can use in service of their scholarly pursuits—whether serving as experimental stimuli or to benchmark face recognition algorithms. Up to now, an index of known face databases, their features, and how to access them has not been available. This lack has had at least...

People vary widely in their acceptance of the use of pharmacological cognitive enhancement (CE). We tested the hypothesis that the acceptability of CE is malleable, by varying the context in which CE use takes place, by framing the use of CE with positive and negative metaphors, and by distinguishing between self and other CE use. 2519 US-based par...

Visual art offers cognitive neuroscience an opportunity to study how subjective value is constructed from representations supported by multiple neural systems. A surprising finding in research on aesthetic judgment is that functional activation of motor areas of the brain often occurs in response to static, abstract stimuli, such as paintings. This...

Are people with flawed faces regarded as having flawed moral characters? An “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype is hypothesized to facilitate negative biases against people with facial anomalies (e.g., scars), but whether and how these biases affect behavior and brain functioning remain open questions. We examined responses to anomalous faces in brain (u...

Creative language is defined as linguistic output that is both novel and appropriate. Metaphors are one such example of creative language in which one concept is used to express another by highlighting relevant semantic features. While novelty is an inherent property of unfamiliar metaphors, appropriateness depends on the context. The current study...

People spend considerable time within built environments. In this study, we tested two hypotheses about the relationship between people and built environments. First, aesthetic responses to architectural interiors reduce to a few key psychological dimensions that are sensitive to design features. Second, these psychological dimensions evoke specifi...

art paintings, global image properties, and verbal descriptions: An empirical and computational investigation Abstract art Network Description Image properties ABSTRACT While global image properties (GIPs) relate to preference ratings in many categories of visual stimuli, this relationship is typically not seen for abstract art paintings. Using com...

Objectives: To test the hypothesis that quality of life (QOL) is made up of different components, and each of these has different anatomic and demographic contributors. Design: Questionnaire-based study. Setting: Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania. Participants: People with chronic brain injury (N=52) volunteered f...

Creative language is defined as linguistic output that is both novel and appropriate. Metaphors are one such example of creative language in which one concept is used to express another by highlighting certain semantic features. While novelty is an inherent property of unfamiliar metaphors, appropriateness depends on the context. The current study...

Discussions of architectural beauty have largely taken place outside of empirical science. Over the past decade, however, neuroaesthetics has generated new insights into the neurobiological underpinnings of beauty and art. Now, scientists are also beginning to probe the intersection of neuroscience and architecture. The emerging field of neuroarchi...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

Faces are among the most salient and relevant visual and social stimuli that humans encounter. Attractive faces are associated with positive character traits and social skills and automatically evoke larger neural responses than faces of average attractiveness in ventral occipito-temporal cortical areas. Little is known about the behavioral and neu...

Gestures might serve communicative functions by supplementing spoken expressions or restorative functions by facilitating speech production. Also, speakers with speech deficits use gestures to compensate for their speech impairments. In this study, we examined gesture use in speakers with and without speech impairments and how spoken spatial expres...

Time is talked about in terms of space more frequently than the other way around. Some have suggested that this asymmetry runs deeper than language. The idea that we think about abstract domains (like time) in terms of relatively more concrete domains (like space) but not vice versa can be traced to Conceptual Metaphor Theory. This theoretical acco...

Work with non-human animals and human navigation experts (London taxi drivers) suggests that the size of the hippocampus, particularly the right posterior hippocampus in humans, relates to navigation expertise. Similar observations, sometimes implicating other sections of the hippocampus, have been made for aging populations and for people with neu...

The relative contributions of the left and right hemispheres to the processing of metaphoric language remains unresolved. Neuropsychological studies of brain-injured patients have motivated the hypothesis that the right hemisphere plays a critical role in understanding metaphors. However, the data are inconsistent and the hypothesis is not well-sup...

Work with non-human animals and human navigation experts (London taxi drivers) suggests that the size of the hippocampus, particularly the right posterior hippocampus in humans, relates to navigation expertise. Similar observations, sometimes implicating other sections of the hippocampus, have been made for aging populations and for people with neu...

Brain damage is associated with linguistic deficits and might alter co-speech gesture production. Gesture production after focal brain injury has been mainly investigated with respect to intrasentential rather than discourse-level linguistic processing. In this study, we examined 1) spontaneous gesture production patterns of people with left hemisp...

International Society for Gesture Studies (ISGS) - GESTURE Conference

Modern spatial navigation requires fluency with multiple representational formats, including visual scenes, signs, and words. These formats convey different information. Visual scenes are rich and specific but contain extraneous details. Arrows, as an example of signs, are schematic representations in which the extraneous details are eliminated, bu...

Modern spatial navigation requires fluency with multiple representational formats, including visual scenes, signs, and words. These formats convey different information. Visual scenes are rich and specific, but contain extraneous details. Arrows, as an example of signs, are schematic representations in which the extraneous details are eliminated, b...

Much evidence suggests that preference for curvilinear visual contour is robust. We collected data from experts (i.e., self-identified architects and designers) and nonexperts to test the hypothesis that expertise moderates one’s sensitivity to curvilinear contour within architectural spaces. When assessing beauty, experts found rectilinear spaces...

People’s physical appearance can have a profound impact on their social interactions. Faces are often the first thing we notice about people and the basis on which we form our first impressions of them. People with facial disfigurement are discriminated against throughout their lives. Currently, we do not know why this discrimination occurs. In ord...

The Distancing-Embracing model proposes that negative emotions are constitutive of aesthetic experiences. This move is welcome and adds depth to empirical aesthetics. However, the model's emphasis on temporality challenges how best to think of static art forms. I suggest that “decisive” and “distilled” moments dilate time in the viewer's mind and m...

Knowing where north is provides a navigator with invaluable information for learning and recalling a space, particularly in places with limited navigational cues, like complex indoor environments. Although north is effectively used by orienteers, pilots, and military personnel, very little is known about whether nonexpert populations can or will us...

A burgeoning interest in the intersection of neuroscience and architecture promises to offer biologically inspired insights into the design of spaces. The goal of such interdisciplinary approaches to architecture is to motivate construction of environments that would contribute to peoples' flourishing in behavior, health, and well-being. We suggest...

There has been recent debate over whether actions are processed primarily by means of motor simulation or cognitive semantics. The current study investigated how abstract action concepts are processed in the brain, independent of the format in which they are presented. Eighteen healthy adult participants viewed different actions (e.g., diving, boxi...

Knowing where north is provides a navigator with invaluable information for learning and recalling a space, particularly in places with limited navigational cues, like complex indoor environments. Although north is effectively used by orienteers, pilots, and military personnel, very little is known about whether non-expert populations can or will u...

There is contradictory evidence on whether speech production gets impaired or enhanced when people are restrained from gesturing. There is also very little research on how this effect can change with aging. The present study sought evidence for these by asking young and elderly adults to describe two different routes on a map in spontaneous speech...

[This corrects the article on p. 117 in vol. 5, PMID: 28589120.].