Exposure to music, art, and architecture can have a formative impact on our sense of self. We often have vivid memories of the first concert we went to or a being awed by a painting in a museum. Psychological studies of identity, though, have tended to focus on the impact of categories like memory and morality rather than aesthetics when it comes to our sense of who we are.
A 2021 paper, however, hopes to change this. The paper describes four studies that together suggest that ordinary shifts in aesthetic taste, such as in preference for visual or musical styles, constitute a significant change in one’s sense of identity which scientists have dubbed the “Aesthetic-Self-Effect.” The first study, for instance, found that people were more likely to register a change in taste in music as altering who they are than they were a change in career paths, or leisure interests. The fourth study, moreover, found that taking up activities or interests linked to aesthetic categories, like developing an interest in the arts, had a stronger perceived impact on one’s identity than taking up interests not tied to aesthetics.
This connection between aesthetics and identity helps shed light on the importance of moments of aesthetic discovery. Finding music or art that “speaks to me” isn’t just an act of teenage independence, but a way for the self to begin cementing. The research involved in the study suggested that this may be one of the reasons that people so frequently hold tightly to their taste that formed in their youth. To change their preferences, would be to change their sense of who they are.
