Are There Different Types of Beauty?

Abstract information

Are there different types of beauty? In this video, WINFRIED MENNINGHAUS investigates the meanings of and values inherent in four categories of subject appeal, namely beauty, elegance, grace, and sexiness. Adopting a bottom-up approach which foregrounds individual beliefs over theoretical assumptions, Menninghaus finds that elegance, grace, and sexiness are sub-variants of the broader notion of beauty. Among its many insights, the work explores why persons of outstanding beauty are perceived as self-centered while, by contrast, elegance is associated with positive social virtues.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB10777

Researcher

Professor Winfried Menninghaus is Director of the Department of Language and Literature at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics. Having previously directed the interdisciplinary research cluster Languages of Emotions at the Free University of Berlin, Menninghaus’s research interests include philosophical, empirical and evolutionary aesthetics and classical rhetoric and poetics. A member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences since 2002, Menninghaus’s monograph Aesthetics After Darwin: The Multiple Origins and Functions of the Arts was published in 2019.

Institution information

Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics

The Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) was founded in 2013 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and is part of the Max Planck Society. In a joint effort of researchers from the humanities and the natural sciences, it explores who aesthetically appreciates what, for which reasons and under which situational and historical circumstances, and analyzes the functions of aesthetic practices and preferences for both individuals and societies. In this interplay between the humanities and the natural sciences, the MPIEA draws on a broad range of multidisciplinary expertise as well as a variety of methods. The primary focuses in our research on the many nuances of aesthetic perception include the individual, cultural, and historical differences among aesthetic preferences; the cognitive and affective mechanisms governing aesthetically evaluative perception as well as their neural, physiological, and behavioral correlates, the functions of aesthetic experiences for personal development, subjective well-being, and social communication.

Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics

Original Publication

Beauty, Elegance, Grace, and Sexiness Compared

Winfried Menninghaus

,

Valentin Wagner

,

Vanessa Kegel

,

Christine A. Knoop

,

Wolff Schlotz

Published in 2019

Das Versprechen der Schönheit

Winfried Menninghaus

Published in 2003

Aesthetic Appreciation of Poetry Correlates with Ease of Processing in Event-related Potentials

Christian Obermeier

,

Sonja A. Kotz

,

Sarah Jessen

,

Tim Raettig

,

Martin von Koppenfels

,

Published in 2015

The Emotional Power of Poetry: Neural Circuitry, Psychophysiology and Compositional Principles

Eugen Wassiliwizky

,

Stefan Koelsch

,

Valentin Wagner

,

Thomas Jacobsen

,

Winfried Menninghaus

Published in 2017

Mapping the Aesthetic Space of Literature “From Below”

Christine A. Knoop

,

Valentin Wagner

,

Thomas Jacobsen

,

Winfried Menninghaus

Published in 2016