Cultural Psychology of Aesthetics: Art Viewing and Aesthetic Development in Iranian Culture

Abstract Why is it that some find art a prickly puzzle, others a yawning expanse, while others dive into its depths with vibrant joy? Some theorists have tried to quantify this diversity of art viewership. Famously, Housen made the case for five stages of aesthetic development: (a) accountive, (b) constructive, (c) classifying, (d) interpretive, and (e) re-creative. Here, we developed and validated a 17-item measure of aesthetic development that captures these stages. In a sample from Iran ( N = 917), we showed how people’s scores on these stages correlate with personality traits and other art-related constructs. Specifically, we found that individuals with higher knowledge about art and more training in the arts tend to be at a more advanced stage of aesthetic development. People who score high on openness to experience also scored higher on more advanced aesthetic development stages. These results have implications for the quantitative studies of art and aesthetics in diverse cultures.