The behavioral architecture and biological utility of aesthetic reactions

ABSTRACT The article presents a behavioral and biological theory as to how aesthetic reactions form. It takes a naturalistic perspective in exploring the likely phylogenetic origins of aesthetic reactions; their functions in the maintenance of human culture; and as indicators of group identity. According to the theory, aesthetic reactions occur when certain affect-charged cognitions interact with transformative effect. The term cognition, as used here, refers to verbal, conceptual, abstract, and derived relational behavior in music, poetry, narratives, and the perception of auditory, visual, tactile, sexual and other sensory stimuli, and excludes respondent behavior. Cognitions become affect-charged and come to elicit affect-linked respondents either when they acquire conditioned stimulus (CS) functionalities via previous Pavlovian conditioning episodes, or when such functionalities are genetic. The theory can be tested experimentally by applying it to the laboratory synthesis of aesthetic reactions and then assessing the result’s conformity to accepted definitions and instances of aesthetic reactions.