剑桥大学心理学家团队开展了一项实验，旨在比较“仅观看艺术”与“主动评判艺术之美”对认知产生的不同影响。
研究中，187人受邀前往凯特尔庭院美术馆，参观一场手工陶艺品展览。参与者被随机分为两组：“美感组”被要求主动思考并评价所见每件展品的美丽程度，而对照组只需将展品与其线描简图进行匹配。所有参与者随后接受测试，以评估他们处理信息的方式——更偏向务实具体，还是更偏向抽象思维。
结果显示，在所有参与者中，美感组在抽象思维测试上的平均得分比对照组高出近14%。尽管研究声称是关于认知过程的，但参与者也被问及个人兴趣，约半数表示自己有艺术爱好。在这一人群中，效果更为显著：美感组中有艺术爱好者的抽象思维平均得分，比对照组中有艺术爱好者高出超过25%。
参与者完成美术馆任务时的情绪状态也通过问卷调查测量。结果显示，美感组报告“具有转化性和自我超越感的情绪”（如感动、启迪、振奋）的平均水平比对照组高出23%。但值得注意的是，美感组并未比对照组感到更快乐，这表明影响抽象思维的是对美的沉浸式体悟，而非体验本身带来的总体积极情绪。
该研究资深作者西蒙·施纳尔表示：“我们在屏幕前做事时，思维往往很具体。如今，放空思绪、任其漫游的机会越来越少，但正是在那种状态下，我们的思维才能更加开阔。欣赏艺术之美，或许是激发抽象认知过程的理想途径。”
附：英文原文
A team of Cambridge psychologists conducted an experiment to compare the cognitive effects of merely seeing art with actively judging how beautiful it is.
In the study,187 people were invited to visit Kettle's Yard gallery during an exhibition of handmade clay objects. Participants were randomly divided into two groups: the “beauty”group was asked to actively consider and then rate the beauty of each object they viewed, while the control group just matched a line drawing of the object with the artwork itself. All participants were then tested on how they process information,and whether it's in a more practical or abstract way.
Across all participants, those in the beauty group scored almost 14% higher on average than the control groupin abstract thinking While they were told the study was about cognitive processes,participants were asked about interests,with around half saying they had an artistic hobby Among those,the effect was greater those with an artistic hobby in the beauty group scored over 25% higher on average for abstract thinking than those with an artistic hobby in the control group.
Emotional states of participants were also measured by asking about their feelings while completing the gallery task Across all participants,those in the beauty group reported an average of 23% higher levels of “transformative and self-transcendent feelings”—such as feeling moved,enlightened and inspired—than the control group Importantly, however,the beauty group did not report feeling any happier than the control group, suggesting that it was the engagement with beauty that influenced abstract thinking, rather than any overall positivity from the experience.
“We usually think in very concrete terms when doing something on a screen,”said Simone Schnall,senior author of the study "It's becoming much rarer to zone out and just let the mind wander, but that's when we think in ways that broaden our minds.Admiring the beauty of art may be the ideal way to initiate the abstract cognitive processes."
