Aenne Brielmann

Home - International Association of Empirical Aesthetics % We are an organization of researchers who use scientific methods to investigate aesthetic experience and aesthetic behavior.

In case you missed it, be sure to check out IAEA's newly redesigned website! You can learn about the society, become a member, learn about affiliated labs, and get info about our 2026 congress!

iaea-aesthetics.org

This is figure 2. The plot shows the distribution of work hours at baseline (in red) and at endpoint (in green). Panel a presents company-level average work hours. Panel b presents individual-level work hours.

A study in Nature Human Behaviour finds that four-day work weeks without a reduction in income boost workers’ job satisfaction and physical and mental health, driven by enhanced work performance, lower levels of fatigue and fewer sleep problems. go.nature.com/3Um75MP #econsky 🧪

What if animals find beauty in the world, just like we do?

Brief article in Psyche:
psyche.co/ideas/what-i...

Can arts-based interventions improve health? A conceptual and methodological critique Can art improve health and wellbeing? The claim that there is strong evidence that engaging with art ameliorates symptoms of mental and physical disor…

@mskov01.bsky.social and @mnadal.bsky.social recently reviewed arts-based interventions:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I got the opportunity to write a comment:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

TLDR: ABIs hold some promise but must be tested with the same rigor as other treatments.

The first two papers from the @leverhulme.ac.uk funded Music & Imagination project are now out, led by the fantastic @hazelvanderwalle.bsky.social! First, we built and validated a stimulus set of over 350 music clips varying in genre, familiarity, emotion, etc. doi.org/10.3758/s134...

Such an ambitious, important project.
So happy to see it published

THE SECRETARY OF EDUCATION WASHINGTON, DC 20202 May 5, 2025 Dr. Alan Garber Office of the President Harvard University Massachusetts Hall Cambridge, MA 02138 Dr. Garber, The Federal Government has a sacred responsibility to be a wise and important steward of American taxpayer dollars. Harvard University, despite amassing a largely tax-free $53.2 billion dollar endowment (larger than the GDP of 100 countries), receives billions of dollars of taxpayer largess each year. Receiving such taxpayer funds is a privilege, not a right. Yet instead of using these funds to advance the education of its students, Harvard is engaging in a systemic pattern of violating federal law. Where do many of these "students" come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country—and why is there so much HATE? These are questions that must be answered, among many more, but the biggest question of all is, why will Harvard not give straightforward answers to the American public? Harvard University has made a mockery of this country's higher education system. It has invited foreign students, who engage in violent behavior and show contempt for the United States of America, to its campus. In every way, Harvard has failed to abide by its legal obligations, its ethical and fiduciary duties, its transparency responsibilities, and any semblance of academic rigor. It had scrapped standardized testing requirements and a normalized grading system. This year Harvard was forced to adopt an embarrassing "remedial math" program for undergraduates. Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics, when it is supposedly so hard to get into this "acclaimed university"? Who is getting in under such a low standard when others, with fabulous grades and a great understanding of the highest levels of mathematics, are being rejected? Harvard has even been embroiled in humiliating plagiarism scandals, exposed clearly and plainly in the media, with respect to your then…

running the institution in a totally chaotic way. Harvard alumnus and highly successful hedge fund manager Bill Ackman noted that, under her leadership, Harvard has become "a political advocacy organization for one party." Ackman has called for the resignation of Pritzker, concluding that the "[t)he mismanagement here is Penny Pritzker" and noting that any serious corporation would have removed her after a litany of recent failings and the fact that, incredibly, "Harvard is not in a good financial position." According to Ackman, one of the world's foremost finance experts, Harvard's so-called S53 billion endowment is "massively overstated as far as what it's really worth," and Harvard has irresponsibly taken out $8 billion in debt. If this is true, it is concerning evidence of Harvard's disastrous mismanagement, indicating an urgent need for massive reform-not continued taxpayer investment. If Harvard prefers not to change, then Harvard should have no problem using its overflowing endowment to fund its bloated bureaucracy. At its best, a university should fulfill the highest ideals of our Nation, and enlighten the thousands of hopeful students who walk through its magnificent gates. But Harvard has betrayed this ideal. Perhaps most alarmingly, Harvard has failed to abide by the United States Supreme Court's ruling demanding that it end its racial preferencing, and continues to engage in ugly racism in its undergraduate and graduate schools, and even within the Harvard Law Review itself. Our universities should be bastions of merit that reward and celebrate excellence and achievement. They should not be incubators of discrimination that encourage resentment and instill grievance and racism into our wonderful young Americans. The above concerns are only a fraction of the long list of Harvard's consistent violations of its own legal duties. Given these and other concerning allegations, this letter is to inform you that Harvard should no longer seek GRANTS from the fede…

Federal Agencies. The Administration's priorities have not changed and today's letter marks the end of new grants for the University. These requests will advance the best interests of Harvard University, so it can reclaim its status as a respected educational institution for the future leaders of America. Thank you for your attention to this matter! Sincerely, Linda E. McMahon Secretary of Education

🚨🚨 Deranged letter from Education Secretary Linda McMahon to Harvard’s president, cutting off federal funding for any new grants.

Worth reading in full. It is NUTS.

The Mirror Model of Art sees creativity and aesthetics as mirrors of one another.

Creativity as aesthetics in reverse? How does the Mirror Model of Art hold up when seen through the lens of neuroscience? It doesn't.

New paper with Oshin Vartanian, Delaram Farzanfar and Pablo Tinio in Neuropsychologia.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

@uoftpsychology.bsky.social
@uoft.bsky.social

🚨 We're hiring! If you're excited about 🤖 ML/LLMs, 🧠 cognitive science, or 💭 computational psychiatry, come join us in Munich. Two fully funded PhDs @www.helmholtz-munich.de: tailored mentorship, international vibe, lots of room to grow.
📅 May 16th
🔗 hcai-munich.com/PhDHCAI.pdf

Sign stating „Do NOT turn off, sleep, or remove from power. Analyses are running.

Ah, yes, now I feel like I’m properly back at work 😂

PhD position opening in Padova. It is a multidisciplinary project in Experimental Aesthetics and Psychology of Art.
www.bertamini.org/lab/MIRACLE....

The cultural evolution of distortion in music (and other norms of mixed appeal) | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Music traditions worldwide are subject to remarkable diversity but the origins of this variation are not well understood. Musical behaviour is the product of a multicomponent collection of abilities, ...

The cultural evolution of distortion in music (and other norms of mixed appeal).

New paper (w Greg Bryant) on a weird social phenomenon, with a general model of how such phenomena evolve as ways to distinguish subcultures.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Our study is now out in @naturecomms.bsky.social! Here, we integrate large-scale registry musicality data from twins to investigate the genetics of music enjoyment 🧬🎶🧑‍🤝‍🧑

While we sadly had to say goodbye to Eva in the EVAlabs, two new people will have the chance to say hello to her at her new lab in Tübingen @iwmtue.bsky.social

www.iwm-tuebingen.de/www/en/karri...

Group arts interventions for depression and anxiety among older adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis - Nature Mental Health In this systematic review and meta-analysis of group arts interventions for older adults, the authors found that participation in shared artistic experience was associated with lower levels of depress...

Phenomenal paper here from Quinn and Jones published in Nature Mental Health showing

Group Arts Activitites can have moderate benefits for #anxiety and #depression for older adults.

🎨🖌️🎭👵🏻

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

#creativeageing @naturementalhealth.bsky.social

So, I’m teaching basic biopsychology of vision this term - anyone want to share some cool demos I could show? #visionscience

Art promotes exploration of negative content | PNAS Experiencing negative content through art has a unique power to transform our perceptions and foster engagement. While this idea has been widely di...

"Our results suggest that art stands as a powerful tool for communicating negative information, that is otherwise costly and unpleasant to engage with... Art may serve as a gateway for staying engaged, and potentially facilitate knowledge, meaningful dialog, and action"

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Examining the Connections Between Music Engagement and Social Well-Being: A Scoping Review: https://osf.io/mbkeh

Data-for-good rapid response team I'm collecting people with data science skills who may want to hear about sporadic opportunities to use their skills for good on short projects. Project themes will center on topics I am connected wit...

I'm organizing a "Data for Good Rapid Response Team", i.e. a set of people who can be mobilized to work on short data science projects to help various groups and organizations. Sign up here if this is of interest to you, and please share with others with data science skills.

💃🧠 Psyched to share my latest paper in Neuron on the past, present and future of dance neuroscience research! Crazy to think where this field will be in 20 more years 🚀

authors.elsevier.com/a/1kkh3_KOmx...

#PsychSciSky #neuroskyence #Dance #CognitiveNeuroscience #Neuroaesthetics #BrainScience

Ah, my long held nightmare from grad school days came true 😞

Can arts-based interventions improve health? A conceptual and methodological critique Can art improve health and wellbeing? The claim that there is strong evidence that engaging with art ameliorates symptoms of mental and physical disor…

"Can arts-based interventions improve health? A conceptual and methodological critique" by @mnadal.bsky.social and I has been accepted for publication in Physics of Life Reviews.

The pre-proof version is online at the following URL:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Tens of thousands of psychological measures have been created, but 79% are not reused more than twice.

In a new article in NHB lead by @faridanvari.bsky.social and @ruben.the100.ci we quantify this fragmentation in psychology's measures and propose solutions.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

If you ever need to get all the important image stats for your study (quick, easy, comprehensive), here’s your shiny new go to tool:

Had to leave the guitar behind though 😢
Next one is on the long things to buy list - right after towels and a bike 😅

Aesthetics 2025 Submission period: 10 February 2025 - 31 March 2025

Interested in fresh new #neuroaesthetics research? Want to hear from brilliant keynotes @neurobea.bsky.social, @anjanchatterjee.bsky.social & Fredrik Ullén from @ae.mpg.de, and an all-⭐ cast of speakers? Then submit your abstract & join us in Ascona🇨🇭 this Sept! Plz share! sbs.ethz.ch/conference.h...

Wish I could have been there for APA Div10 😢
Next time, promised 🤞

Oh, yes, that "but" is a big one. That bit in parentheses in the quote deserves a full sentence. With "!". I should be an interpreter or literary scholar according to childhood/early teen testing.

We'll commit to a slice 🥧

Happy Pi Day!

Quite fascinating. Simple data, solid analyses, great sampling approach. Does it catpure all kinds of diverese relationships? No. (tough ask) Food for thought, for sure.