title: Empathy-Related Responses to Depicted People in Art Works.
abstract: Existing theories of empathic response to visual art works postulate the primacy of automatic embodied reaction to images based on mirror neuron mechanisms. Arguing for a more inclusive concept of empathy-related response and integrating four distinct bodies of literature, we discuss contextual, and personal factors which modulate empathic response to depicted people. We then present an integrative model of empathy-related responses to depicted people in art works. The model assumes that a response to empathy-eliciting figural artworks engages the dynamic interaction of two mutually interlinked sets of processes: socio-affective/cognitive processing, related to the person perception, and esthetic processing, primarily concerned with esthetic appreciation and judgment and attention to non-social aspects of the image. The model predicts that the specific pattern of interaction between empathy-related and esthetic processing is co-determined by several sets of factors: (i) the viewer's individual characteristics, (ii) the context variables (which include various modes of priming by narratives and other images), (iii) multidimensional features of the image, and (iv) aspects of a viewer's response. Finally we propose that the model is implemented by the interaction of functionally connected brain networks involved in socio-cognitive and esthetic processing.
authors.affiliation: Applied Neurosciences and Brain Imaging, National Institute of Mental HealthKlecany, Czechia; Department of Art History, Masaryk University BrnoBrno, Czechia.
authors.forename: Ladislav
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kesner
authors.affiliation: Applied Neurosciences and Brain Imaging, National Institute of Mental Health Klecany, Czechia.
authors.forename: Jiří
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Horáček
keywords: affective affordance; art experience; art work; empathy; esthetic processing; socio-affective processing