The Aesthetic Emotion Lexicon: A Literature Review of Emotion Words Used by Researchers to Describe Aesthetic Experiences

Abstract

The emotions that can be considered members of the set of Aesthetic Emotions (AEs) is controversial. The present study investigated the terms used by researchers in peer reviewed studies to exemplify AEs. 100 publications from 2000–2019 exemplifying AE terms were located to produced 111 AEs which were proposed as the basis of an AE lexicon. Awe, (being) moved and wonder were reliable members and without contradiction. One fifth were negatively valenced (e.g., anger, disgust), suggesting that the presence of negative AEs is generally accepted but not reliably. One quarter of the entries were also non-AEs and an additional 20 were exclusively so, producing a total of 131 terms. The lexicon is a concrete, dynamic set of examples against which to investigate extant definitions of AEs and to further develop theory. The robust presence of three terms suggests that calls to abandon the concept of AE may be premature.