The Influence of Depressive Symptoms on Emotional and Hedonic Evaluations of Art

Aesthetic experience involves the appreciation of artworks and the pleasure derived from them. Aesthetic emotions, elicited by the intrinsic qualities of an artwork, are accompanied by a hedonic response and are strongly shaped by individual differences. The same artwork can evoke different affective responses depending on personal history, personality traits, affective state, and art expertise. Depressive traits are particularly relevant, as they are associated with persistent negative affect and cognitive-emotional biases in processing emotional information. Prior research shows that individuals with depressive symptoms tend to rate both emotional and neutral stimuli more negatively, consistent with a broader negativity bias described by cognitive theories of depression. The present study investigates whether this bias extends to the aesthetic domain. Participants viewed 45 artworks (15 negative, 15 neutral, 15 positive) and rated each image on valence, arousal, and liking. They also completed the BDI-II and additional measures assessing anxiety, positive and negative affect, perceived quality of life, artistic interest, and familiarity with the images. Correlations between BDI-II scores and affective evaluations will clarify whether depressive traits influence emotional responses to visual art and whether other individual variables modulate this relationship. We expect higher BDI-II scores to be associated with more negative emotional evaluations. Specifically, increasing depressive symptoms should correspond to less positive ratings of positive artworks, more negative evaluations of neutral artworks, and more negative responses to negative artworks. For arousal, positive artworks are predicted to be perceived as less arousing, whereas negative and neutral artworks as more arousing with higher BDI-II scores. Regarding liking, higher BDI-II scores are expected to be associated with an overall reduction in subjective pleasure, consistent with anhedonia, although negative artworks may elicit higher liking due to psychological distance and emotional congruence. Exploratory analyses will examine additional contributions of anxiety, affectivity, quality of life, artistic interest, and familiarity.