Watch a Horror Film Before Going to the Art Gallery

• A British research study found that watching a horror film prior to viewing abstract art enhances the enjoyment of the art for most people.
• If you're looking to enhance your experience of abstract art, you may want to consider spending some pre-gallery time watching a horror film.
• Kendall Eskine and his colleagues Natalie Kacinik and Jesse Prinz have investigated how different emotions, as well as physiological arousal, influence people's sublime experiences whilst viewing abstract art. Their finding is that fear, but not happiness or general arousal, makes art seem more sublime.
• 85 participants were allocated to one of five conditions prior to looking at the art work.
• Some of them watched a 14-second scary video clip; others watched a 14-second happy video clip; some did 30 jumping jack exercises (designed to induce high physiological arousal); some did 15 jumping jacks (low arousal); whilst the remainder acted as controls and simply looked at the art without any preceding activity or intervention.
• The participants were questioned later and the different conditions had the desired effect - for example, the scary film left the participants in that condition feeling scared, and the happy film left others feeling equally happy.
• The art work was 4 paintings by the Russian abstract artist El Lissitsky, each made up of simple geometric shapes and lines. Each painting was shown for thirty seconds and participants rated their experience of the art in terms of how inspiring it was, stimulating, dull, exciting, moving, boring, uninteresting, rousing/stirring, imposing, and forgetful.
• The main result is that participants who'd watched the scary video clip tended to rate the art as more sublime than did participants in all the other conditions.