Study on the Impact of Art and Happiness

Is push-pin really as good as poetry, as Jeremy Bentham contended?  Or are there “higher” and “lower” pleasures, as JS Mill maintained?  Science says….  

We predicted and found that high (vs. low) art elevates the sense that life has meaning, because it stimulates integrative complexity, a cognitive process in which disparate information is combined into unified, coherent representations. These integrated thoughts pique interest, leading to the sense of life’s meaningfulness. Moreover, the results of two experiments point to the psychological benefits of viewing low (vs. high) art, namely the sense that life is happy. It seems that the relative lack of complex, integrated thoughts stimulated by low art, along with facilitated processing fluency, befits positive feelings about one’s life.

Cheers, 

Colin