Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Through art appreciation, viewers are sometimes inspired to express or implement creative ideas. Such an experienceis thought to be important for art learning. In this study, we conduct a questionnaire to examine how art appreciationpromotes creative inspiration in non-experts. We hypothesize that: (a) individual experience of art-related activities andself-evaluation of artistic expression affect creative inspiration, mediated by the method of appreciation of artworks; and(b) the type of artworks affects creative inspiration, mediated by the method of appreciation of artworks. The participantswere 373 adults, who were not art professionals (179 women, age: M = 45.02, SD = 13.45, range: 20-69 years). Thedata are analyzed using structured equation modeling for the two hypotheses. The two hypotheses are mostly supported,suggesting that self-evaluation of artistic expression and the type of artworks (especially classic works of art) influencecreative inspiration, mediated by the method of appreciation of artworks. However, experience of art-related activities hasno significant direct effect on inspiration for artistic creation.