Abstract
Experiencing negative content through art has a unique power to transform our perceptions and foster engagement. While this idea has been widely discussed, empirical evidence is scarce, since experimental testing of art experiences poses significant challenges. Here, we aimed to fill this gap by quantifying and comparing individuals' preference for engaging with art and nonart depicting matched negative content via two behavioral measures: the choice to engage vs. avoid and the duration of engagement. Across five studies (total N = 1,063), results revealed a preference for engaging with negative content through art as compared to nonart. Specifically, people more frequently chose to view negative art images, and looked at them for longer, as compared to photographs of similar content. To understand what underlies this preference for art, we examined the psychological impact of engaging with negative content through art and nonart depictions. Results showed that art experiences evoked higher aesthetic appreciation, while nonart gave the viewer a more realistic perspective and was emotionally more costly to engage with. Further, our analysis of engagement motives revealed that individuals were driven by expectations of aesthetic appreciation, thought-provocativeness, and an original perspective, both in art and nonart, while they were discouraged by emotional costs, even more strongly when engaging with nonart. These findings align with the idea of aesthetic distance, where art, as an abstraction of reality, facilitates exploration of negative content with less emotional costs and the prospect of aesthetic rewards.