The prevalence and predictors of experiences of beauty in 22 countries: An international assessment of aesthetic appreciation in the Global Flourishing Study

Experiences of beauty (EoB) are an important aspect of wellbeing for many people. However, there is relatively little understanding of factors associated with such experiences, especially cross-nationally. In that respect, we present the most comprehensive international study to date on this topic, assessing an item in the Global Flourishing Study (GFS): “Do you regularly experience things that you consider beautiful? This may include physical beauty or abstract beauty like that found in music, art, or nature.” The GFS is a five-year (minimum) panel study investigating the predictors of flourishing across 22 countries, with this item featuring in the wave 1 “mid-year” survey, comprising 131,487 participants. Besides measuring flourishing-related outcomes, the GFS intake questionnaire assessed 15 flourishing-related factors: four demographic, eight childhood, and three that pertain to both categories. Overall, the most strongly related demographic factor – indicated by the degree of variation among the categories in their association with EoB – was education (with the highest EoB among those with 16 + years of education, which held true in every place except the US), while the most strongly related childhood factor was religious service attendance (especially weekly). Even more notably though, some childhood factors associated with EoB were those normally construed as negative, particularly abuse; while that does not mean such adversity should be appreciated as having an “upside,” it points to EoB having complex roots, one of which may be forms of suffering that potentially make people more open and sensitive to the world. One must also emphasize the substantial cross-cultural variation, with most patterns not universal and inevitable, but subject to local socio-cultural dynamics. More research is needed to provide deeper understanding of this important aspect of human flourishing, for which this paper serves as a generative foundation and impetus.