Art affects a person’s mind and psyche regardless of whether the person himself wants it. Of course, no one can force you to go to a museum, but you can’t always get your neighbors to turn off the annoying music. No one can force you to go to the premiere of a sensational film, but you will still hear about it in the news.
Thus, art is in our lives anyway. And like everything else in our lives, it influences us. In what way? Let’s find out!
What is Art?
To begin with, it’s worth defining what we mean by the term “art”. So, art is a reflection of reality and the internal state of man in artistic images. The images can be dynamic (movies, dance) or static (paintings, sculpture). Images can be sonic (song), visual (painting) or audiovisual (film, music video clip).
Thus, art is very multifaceted. Accordingly, the possibilities of its impact on our psyche are multifaceted and varied. Before turning to the possibilities of art to influence the human psyche, it is worth delving into the mechanisms of such action. Like so much else in this life, art can have a direct or indirect effect on the subject. And this, too, brings its own contribution to the answer to the question.
Mechanisms of the Influence of Art on Human Psyche
Depending on the method of influence, the result will be different. Young people copy the habits and images of superheroes from movies. And listening to incendiary music, we physically feel like our legs are almost carrying us to the dance. These are examples of the direct influence of art on the psyche.
Art and Value Judgments
The impact of art on a person’s mind can hardly always be described in terms of “strong” or “weak,” “bad” or “good.” If someone does not like movies about love, it does not necessarily mean that they are bad or weak. Perhaps one likes detective movies better. And it is certainly a mistake to classify art as “bad” or “good” based solely on the date the work was created. History knows many cases where a brilliant work of art was recognized after the death of the author.
In other words, the evaluative tendency “the older the work of art, the better it is. Therefore, what to us today seems to be nonsense and tasteless, a century later may seem to descendants to be genius.
As we can see, man is often contradictory and wrong when evaluating a particular work of art. At the same time, we have already established that art influences a person, whether he wants it to or not. Are there any universal parameters of influence that appear in all cases? There are such elements of universality!
How Does Art Affect the Subconscious Mind
Even when our conscious mind is occupied with something else, the subconscious mind continues to work in its own, only it knows, direction. We can easily tell if we like or dislike a song without getting into the presence or absence of verbal rhyme or the correctness of the chord selection for a given key.
We almost immediately determine for ourselves whether or not we like a painting, even without knowing the title or the author, and without understanding the nuances of color selection and painting techniques. And we almost don’t care how authentic the plot of a movie or play is, as long as it gets us hooked. This is because His Majesty the Subconscious has worked on all this.
So how does art work with the subconscious mind?
– Art promotes empathy and the ability to empathize. These are extremely emotional states that are hard to learn. A work of art literally forces us to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and feel their emotions.
– Art expands our range of emotions. We sympathize with troubled characters, even if the story is fictional, and we hate scoundrels and villains, if that is what they are represented as in a work of art. These emotions can be noticeably stronger than in an ordinary life, especially one already established in terms of family, life and work.
– Art affects stress hormones in the body. There was an experiment where before and immediately after visiting the Virgin Mary shrine in Vicoforte, all the participants of the excursion were tested for saliva. It turned out that after the tour, the level of the stress hormone cortisol was on average 60% lower.
– Art teaches you to think, i.e., to use your thinking power. Even if you think very poorly about a work of art and its author, you are still thinking at that moment. Even if you weren’t planning to think, but just went to a museum or concert to unwind.
– Art affects intelligence, that is, the ability to think as such. More often than not, such studies are done using music. The results are generally similar. Students and schoolchildren who listened to classical music (especially Mozart!) before completing tests performed better than those who listened to rock music.
By the way, contrary to the longstanding misconception, rock music has a positive effect on the psyche (not the intellect!). The University of Queensland in Australia conducted a study in which participants were asked provocative questions that could make them angry. From time to time, the participants played post-punk, heavy metal and other aggressive music. It turned out that during the sound of all 39 participants in the experiment responded to irritating them questions quieter than without the music.
And, by the way, the pleasure hormone dopamine is produced in any case, when we listen to the music that we like. This has been confirmed by the results of studies.
So here they are, the main factors that allow you to evaluate the impact of art on the psyche and subconscious. And the cognitive and educational aspect of art itself, which makes us more cultured and intelligent, is beyond question. So take every opportunity to touch the magical world of art.
We wish you many new magical discoveries!