One hundred years of Empirical Aesthetics: Fechner to Berlyne (1876 – 1976)

In this chapter, we review the history of Empirical Aesthetics since its foundation byFechner in 1876 to Berlyne’s New Empirical Aesthetics in the 1970s. We explain whyand how Fechner founded the field, and how Wundt and Müller’s students continued hiswork in the early 20th century. In the United States, Empirical Aesthetics flourished aspart of American functional psychology at first, and later as part of behaviorists’ interestin reward value. The heyday of behaviorism was also a golden age for the developmentof all sorts of tests for artistic and aesthetic aptitudes. We end the chapter covering thecontributions of Gestalt psychology and Berlyne’s motivational theory to EmpiricalAesthetics.