Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, Ph.D., senior research scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and scholar of psychology of art, creativity, and emotions, has been awarded a 3-year, $1 million grant from the Templeton Religion Trust. This grant will advance Dr. Ivcevic Pringle’s research project, “Mirror to the World: The Power of Art to Build Understanding and Creativity," into its second phase of exploration into the power of art on human understanding, cognition, and creativity.
As project director, Dr. Ivcevic Pringle will lead this research in close collaboration with co-director Dr. Pablo Tinio, professor and Head of the Creativity and Aesthetics Lab at Montclair State University. Together, they seek to understand the effects of art engagement on cognitive and emotional processes. Both phase one and two projects are grounded in the premise of aesthetic cognitivism, which asserts that art serves a vital role in deepening our understanding of ourselves, the human experience, and moral and spiritual concepts. The new grant will build on the phase one project (2022-2024), which explored the emotional and cognitive processes in the experience of personally meaningful art, guided by the mirror model of art from psychology. The mirror model of art describes art creation processes and appreciation as reverse images of each other. Artists begin with an idea of what they seek to convey and then translate their ideas into tangible artworks through creative processes, while viewers initially encounter the finished artwork, and through continued reflection, access the intended concepts and meanings embedded by the artist and draw connections to their personal experiences.
In the phase one project, Dr. Ivcevic Pringle started with a fundamental observation that despite the vast scholarship on experiences of art, researchers have yet to capture and understand the most meaningful aspects of such experiences—thoughts and insights we have walking out of a museum, the sense of encounter after seeing a meaningful work of art, or the changed thinking after interactions with art. To answer these questions, researchers stepped out of the laboratory and partnered with the Whitney Museum of American Art to investigate two cognitive outcomes of art engagement: the insights acquired by viewers and the stimulation of creative thought. Results from the phase one project revealed five broad themes of understanding from interaction with art: (1) Viewers gain insights into deliberate choices about materials and techniques made by artists; (2) Art serves as a reflective tool, allowing viewers to connect with their personal histories and experiences; (3) Viewers gain understanding into artists' motivations and creative processes, providing a window into the artist's world; (4) Viewers uncover rich narratives in the artwork, deepening their appreciation and comprehension of the art; and (5) Meaningful art offers insights into societal truths and existential realities, fostering spiritual and introspective moments.
The upcoming three-year project's multifaceted approach includes several goals:
- Development of a Measurement Tool: Dr. Ivcevic Pringle and her team will create a novel tool to measure the understandings gained from engaging with art. This tool will be utilized to achieve project goals and will be made freely available for use by researchers and museums.
- Study of Artist-Audience Mirroring: Professional artists will be surveyed about their creative process while they create artwork. The team will then curate an exhibit to display these artworks and study their effects on viewers. This investigation aims to uncover the similarities between artists' intentions and viewers' experiences. In line with the mirror model or art, these correspondences are key to understanding the insights audiences derive from art.
- Investigation of Virtual Gallery Engagement: The project will explore how engagement with art in a virtual gallery setting can promote creativity, providing insights into the mechanisms behind this process. Furthermore, the project will investigate whose creativity benefits from what kinds of art and when.
The project is a bridge between empirical psychological studies and the daily encounters of museum visitors, artists, and educators, demonstrating that art is more than just observing; it is an experience to be sensed, contemplated, and fully appreciated for its human impact. The outcomes of this research will impact scholars of art, museum professionals, educators, and the broader public. Scholars will benefit from both a reliable research tool and insights gained from studies testing fundamental concepts in aesthetic cognitivism and the mirror model of art. This project also equips museum professionals with a useful tool to assess visitor engagement and understandings gained from art, enabling informed decision-making, and enhancing the effectiveness of different exhibitions and programs they bring to the public. Educators seeking to foster understanding and creative thinking through art engagement will find insights which can guide the development of programs tailored to specific learning objectives and skills. By uncovering the mechanisms behind art's impact on cognition, this research empowers educators to enhance the effectiveness of their teaching approaches.
The Templeton Religion Trust grant will also fund a residential postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University, an interdisciplinary colloquium series on aesthetic cognitivism, and the development of a project website to share research findings with the public.
For more information on this project, please connect with Dr. Ivcevic Pringle.