Oxford University Press 2018
How Art Works, by Ellen Winner, examines how psychologists have approached philosophical questions about the arts --
* What makes us call something art?
* Do we experience “real” emotions from the arts?
* Do we believe aesthetic judgments have truth value?
* Does engagement in the arts make us smarter?
* Does reading fiction make us more empathetic?
* Do beliefs about the artist's process shape aesthetic judgments?
* Is modern art something my kid could do?
* What's wrong with a perfect fake?
* Is achieving greatness in art a matter of 10,000 hours of hard work?
Philosophers and laypeople have long puzzled about these kinds of questions. Psychologists have now begun to explore these questions empirically, and have made many fascinating discoveries using the methods of social science.