Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Art appreciation is often a collective, embodied process, yet research remains predominantly individual-focused. This study investigates emotional sharing and physiological coordination during joint art exploration in ecologically valid environments. We conducted two art tour studies where small groups explored artworks in culturally meaningful spaces while their emotional states, behaviors, and heart rates were monitored. Results indicate that joint appreciation is a dynamically evolving social process rather than a set of independent reactions. Crucially, dynamics varied by exploration scale: appreciating single, constrained artworks increased interest and stable physiological synchronization, whereas exploring multiple artworks across broader spaces elicited relational affects, such as harmony and gratitude, with fluctuating physiological synchronization patterns. These findings suggest that shared aesthetic experience is an emergent cognitive process shaped by embodied interaction and spatial scale. This research underscores the necessity of field-based, multi-participant approaches to capture the complexity of real-world art appreciation.