We as a species love fascinating and interesting things. Sometimes we even need to suspend our disbelief upon seeing an unbelievable picture. Surely, that bonsai can’t be just growing randomly in the middle of a lake!
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Some things we can’t believe are real due to their aesthetic value. “The beauty found in art and nature is so intense that sometimes you just have to pause and take it in,” psychologist Gema Sánchez Cuevas writes forExploring Your Mind.A beautiful landscape, a fascinating work of art or a moving poem have the power to trigger a positive emotion in us. Professor at the University of Barcelona Rafael Bisquerra refers to them as “aesthetic emotions.“According to him, “art – or any object creating beauty – can spark numerous responses in people, both positive and negative – which have their roots in emotional response.”
Some things we can’t believe are real due to their aesthetic value. “The beauty found in art and nature is so intense that sometimes you just have to pause and take it in,” psychologist Gema Sánchez Cuevas writes forExploring Your Mind.
A beautiful landscape, a fascinating work of art or a moving poem have the power to trigger a positive emotion in us. Professor at the University of Barcelona Rafael Bisquerra refers to them as “aesthetic emotions.“According to him, “art – or any object creating beauty – can spark numerous responses in people, both positive and negative – which have their roots in emotional response.”
When there’s a stimulus that combines the known with the unknown, it inspires, interests and arouses our brains. Our minds love a mystery and strive to solve it. Let’s take that picture of the frozen bamboo in Kyoto. It automatically makes us ask: “How does this happen?”
How else can we describe this feeling of fascination? It’s definitely positive: it makes us feel happy, joyful, inspired, interested and amazed. Sabater calls this “a psycho-physiological state of great transcendence.”
Why is fascination so powerful? AsSabaterputs it, “every stimulus that generates fascination in us almost instantly activates our limbic system.” That’s the part of our brain that regulates our behavioral and emotional responses. “Once this area is stimulated, endorphins (pleasure hormones) are released, which can even help people focus and flow with new ideas,“Sabaterwrites.
The psychologist also pulls out an interesting fact related to the origin of the word “fascinate”. It has its roots in the Latin word “to bewitch.” It had a negative connotation in the past and people associated it with controlling a person against their will. However, nowadays the word “fascinate” has a light-hearted connotation, referring to feelings of well-being.
Researcher Michelle Shiota says that awe is exclusively a human experience. “The capacity for awe relies on something that humans are certainly best at,” she explains. “That is taking a mental map of things and people in the world and forming an internal mental representation of those things.”
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“When we’re in an awe state, part of what our minds are telling us is that prior experience doesn’t necessarily apply here,” she continues. “What we think it’s doing is promoting a cognitive and behavioral state – and perhaps even a physiological state – that makes it easier to take in information.”
So let yourself focus on these pictures from nature and elsewhere that we found on ther/CantBelieveThatRealsubreddit. Don’t be afraid to “stop moving”, as Liota said, and bask in the awe that these images elicit. Apparently, it’s really good for your well-being.
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