Appreciation processing evoking feelings of being moved and inspiration: Awe and meaning-making

Art appreciation evokes feelings of being moved, which, in turn, may inspire creative activities. However, the experience of being aesthetically moved can involve various processes, and it remains unclear which appreciation processes specifically lead to being moved and inspired. This experiment investigated whether three appreciation processes—perceived beauty, feelings of awe, and meaning making—facilitate feelings of inspiration through the feeling of being moved. Participants (33 undergraduate and graduate students; 14 females and 19 meles; mean age = 21.48, SD = 2.28) were instructed to appreciate paintings by either inferring their meaning or evaluating their beauty, and were then required to view a painting and draft a short creative story about it. They were also asked to report the extent to which they felt inspired during the writing phase and felt moved, perceived beauty, awe, and meaning-making during the appreciation phase. Mediation analyses indicated that meaning-making promoted feelings of inspiration through increased feelings of being moved in both the meaning inference and impression evaluation conditions, and that feelings of awe promoted feelings of inspiration in the meaning inference condition, but not in the impression evaluation condition. Furthermore, correlation and partial correlation analyses indicated that perceived beauty was not significantly correlated with feelings of inspiration. Our results provide a deeper understanding of the psychological mechanisms of inspiration through art appreciation from the perspectives of feelings of being moved, awe, and meaning-making.