Co-authored with Vicente Estrada Gonzalez
Common wisdom suggests that aesthetic judgment is subjective—a notion often expressed as “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” This resonates when we encounter music we find jarring, fashion choices we deem eccentric, or art that leaves us perplexed. Yet, we also experience a contrary intuition: that certain preferences are indeed universal. Consider the widespread consensus on attractive actors, the reliance on aggregate reviews for film selections, or the near-unanimous appreciation for a striking natural vista, as evidenced by countless shared images.
This apparent paradox—that aesthetic experiences can be both intensely personal and remarkably uniform—is illuminated by research in empirical aesthetics. The divergence in agreement often hinges on the nature of the object under consideration. Studies indicate that individuals tend to exhibit greater consensus regarding the appeal of natural subjects, such as human faces and landscapes, compared to man-made creations like architecture and artworks (Vessel et al., 2018). This leads to a deeper inquiry: when agreement occurs, what is it that we are actually agreeing upon?
When We Like the Same Thing, Do We Feel the Same Way?
Our recent investigation, published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, explored a fundamental question: If two individuals appreciate the same piece of art, are their underlying experiences identical (Estrada Gonzalez et al., 2026)?
To address this, participants were exposed to artworks from the Barnes Foundation and artifacts from the Penn Museum, dedicating one minute to each item. Following this engagement, they were asked the standard question in aesthetic research: “Do you like it? Do you find it beautiful?” However, as anyone familiar with profound artistic encounters knows, the response is seldom confined to such broad affirmations.
To delve beyond simple liking and beauty, we employed a validated lexicon of 69 terms developed in our laboratory to articulate the multifaceted dimensions of aesthetic experience (Christensen et al., 2023). These terms encompass immediate, visceral reactions—such as feelings of pleasure, calm, anger, or distress—as well as more contemplative responses that emerge over time, like feeling absorbed, inspired, enlightened, or enraptured.
Same Painting, Different Worlds
Imagine two acquaintances at the Guggenheim Museum, both pausing before Kandinsky’s “Composition 8.” They might concur, “This is quite compelling.”
Later, discussing the piece, they might both praise the harmonious interplay of geometric forms, the balanced composition, and the subtle color palette. However, the conversation could then veer into more personal territory. One might recall a formative experience, such as a teacher explaining Kandinsky’s synesthesia and its connection to music, imbuing the artwork with a sense of memory, intellectual discovery, and a fleeting but potent sense of revelation. While both friends found the painting aesthetically pleasing, their personal histories and cognitive frameworks led to distinct experiential trajectories. Certain elements of aesthetic appreciation are indeed shared, but others are profoundly shaped by the individual’s unique repository of memories, knowledge, emotional associations, and emergent meanings.
Agreement Fades as Experience Deepens
Our findings align precisely with this intuition. We quantified agreement across all aesthetic descriptors on a scale from −1 to 1, where 1 signifies complete consensus, 0 indicates no shared response, and negative values denote opposing reactions.
The data revealed a distinct pattern: agreement was highest for judgments of beauty and liking, registering at 0.43. This consensus diminished for positive emotional responses like pleasure or calmness (0.30), and further decreased for negative emotions such as feeling upset or challenged (0.19). The lowest levels of agreement were observed for experiences presumed to require deeper reflection and time—such as feeling inspired, enlightened, or profoundly absorbed—which averaged around 0.11.
In practical terms, this suggests that while individuals may agree on the superficial appraisal of an artwork’s beauty, akin to agreeing that a sunset is photogenic or red roses are appropriate for Valentine’s Day, the internal, experiential journey it triggers—whether it evokes absorption, enchantment, or a sense of transformation—is where individual differences truly manifest.
Beneath the surface of shared aesthetic preferences can lie vastly different experiential pathways that give rise to that agreement.
Business Style Takeaway: Understanding that agreement on liking does not equate to agreement on experience is crucial for effective leadership. It highlights the importance of probing beyond surface-level consensus in teams to uncover the diverse underlying motivations, knowledge, and emotional responses that drive individual perspectives, ultimately leading to more nuanced decision-making and richer collaborative outcomes.
According to the portal: www.psychologytoday.com