Barbieri and colleagues probed the repercussions of positive, aesthetic-based experiences. They report that “aesthetic appreciation promoted curiosity-driven behaviour while it was negatively associated with anxiety. These results were consistent with the idea that aesthetic appreciation could act as a ‘valve’, prompting the individual to perceive curiosity (i.e. to consider novelty as a valuable opportunity to acquire new knowledge) rather than anxiety (i.e. to consider novelty as a risk to be avoided). . . . aesthetic appreciation might help us to expect that uncertainty can be resolved in the future, thereby equipping us with second order expectations on a given rate of uncertainty reduction through exploration. . . . The interplay between aesthetic positive emotions and anxiety might be relevant for a wide variety of applicative domains. As an example, the idea that aesthetic appreciation might affect anxious states, and that expecting aesthetic rewards can transform anxiety into arousal and curiosity plays a central role in some psychotherapeutic models of human change.”
Paolo Barbieri, Pietro Sarasso, Fabio Lodico, Alice Aliverti, Kou Murayama, Katluscia Sacco, and Irene Ronga. 2024. “The Aesthetic Valve: How Aesthetic Appreciation May Switch Emotional States from Anxiety to Curiosity.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol. 379, no. 1895, https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0413