The visual language of pain: the role of rendering style and pain type in aesthetic and empathetic appraisals of painful images

Graywill, Kelsey and Chamberlain, Rebecca. 2024. The visual language of pain: the role of rendering style and pain type in aesthetic and empathetic appraisals of painful images. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, ISSN 1931-3896 [Article] (In Press)

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Abstract or Description

Art is capable of evoking empathetic and aesthetic responses in the presence of negative content like pain and suffering. The impact that artistic modes of depiction have on aesthetic and empathetic responses to painful stimuli has not been fully explored. In this study, participants viewed neutral and painful stimuli depicting humans with visible and invisible injuries across plain and artistic rendering styles. The results of an ANOVA and mediation analysis suggested that an artistic rendering style impacts empathetic responses in two ways: 1) An artistic rendering style communicates visual pain information which directly increases cognitive empathy, 2) An artistic rendering style impacts affective empathy, but this relationship is mediated by how much the viewer likes the image. This study illustrates the capacity of images to modulate multidimensional empathy by utilizing visual aids and aesthetic appeal. This has important implications for any discipline that treats, trains, informs, or entertains through use of images depicting pain.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000692

Additional Information:

“©American Psychological Association, 2024. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. The final article will be available, upon publication, at: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/aca/index”

Keywords:

Visual art; aesthetic appreciation; empathy, pain perception,

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Psychology

Dates:

DateEvent
7 March 2024Accepted
2 December 2024Published Online

Item ID:

35203

Date Deposited:

07 Mar 2024 11:13

Last Modified:

07 Dec 2024 12:54

Peer Reviewed:

Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/35203

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