7. Global aesthetics

Abstract

How does your aesthetic experience depend on what culture you grew up in? ‘Global aesthetics’ explains that much of it is due to the abundance of top–down influences on perception. But how do these top–down influences on perception work and what processes mediate them? Two mediating mechanisms are discussed—attention and mental imagery—which are exercised differently depending on what culture we have grown up in. As a result, perception depends on our cultural background. Global aesthetics is therefore about the geography of vision. It concludes that we should always be aware of the cultural perspective that we occupy and treat our aesthetic evaluations with humility.