Five types of experience underly our engagements with visual art

The visual arts are found across our societies and are tied to a range of cognitive, affective, and physiological impacts. Their widespread engagement remains a core feature of human behaviour and cultural practice. However, systematic empirical investigations on the actual scope and nature of our art experiences are limited, as is understanding of what kinds of reactions we can actually have, how these manifest, and the extent to which responses might be shared or are unique and esoteric. We collected 2,747 reports of individual's art experiences using a theory-driven list of phenomenal items administered in museums across Europe and North America. Network modelling and latent profile analysis revealed five supraordinate experience types. These emerged across artwork-viewer combinations and showed distinct associations to hedonic, epistemic, economic, and well-being outcomes. Our findings challenge reductive accounts of art perception, highlight complex patterned responses, and offer a robust foundation for future applications and research.