On the Science of the Arts and the Humanities: An Interview with Dr. James Pawelski

PHOTO COURTESY OF MIRIAM ESPACIO OF UNSPLASH

The latest issue of MAPP magazine focused on the topic of the Positive Humanities. As the editors, we received a great deal of positive feedback after publishing it. To learn more about the latest happenings in the field of the Positive Humanities, I interviewed Dr. James Pawelski, the director of the Humanities and Human Flourishing Lab at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) and founding director of UPenn’s Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) Program.

It was really fun and rewarding to discuss with James the various ways in which humanities and human flourishing are linked. What especially stood out for me was the role ethics plays in this relationship. As someone who majored in Philosophy in her undergraduate studies, I immediately thought of all the great philosophers who studied ethics and virtue. According to Aristotle's ethical theory, for instance, the purpose of ethics is to improve our lives. Aristotle establishes a connection between being a good person and living a good and happy life. In order to live well, we need to lead a virtuous life, Aristotle claims. It seems that we have come full circle in seeing the role ethics plays in human flourishing.

Another highlight of the interview for me was the distinction between enjoyment and pleasure. We discussed with James how our leisure time is disproportionately focused on pleasure rather than enjoyment. Our discussion reminded me of an observation German philosopher Josef Pieper made a century ago. In our modern life, “there is more and more entertainment and less and less joy,” Pieper noted. I encourage you to read the interview to see how you can make enjoyment (or perhaps joy) play a larger role in your leisure time.

Without giving more away, I leave you with the interview.

Irem: What role do you think the arts and humanities play in human flourishing? What types of flourishing outcomes (e.g., development of character) can emerge from engaging in arts and humanities?

James: From the perspective of the Positive Humanities, we are really interested in a broad range of flourishing outcomes. One of the first things that we did in the humanities and human flourishing project that I direct at UPenn is to create a conceptual model, because when we investigated the literature to see what studies have been done to understand the connection between engagement in arts and humanities, and human flourishing, we did not find much. Therefore, we thought part of the problem is that there was not a conceptual model. Accordingly, we developed a conceptual model, wherein we worked to operationalize engagement with arts and humanities. That's a hard thing in itself—because defining what the humanities means is difficult. There's a lot of debate about it. To resolve this, we did a qualitative analysis of a range of definitions that have been presented. That's how we arrived at our sense of what it means to engage in the arts and humanities. Readers interested in the results of our analysis can find our paper (Shim, Tay, Ward, & Pawelski, 2019) on our website at www.humanitiesandhumanflourishing.org.

Back to your question, how do we think engagement in arts and humanities influences human flourishing? We're interested in a wide range of things, starting with physiological effects. Certain forms of engagement in arts and culture certainly would have a calming effect, bringing down our stress levels. For example, listening to music and dancing have various effects on the brain and the body.

Apart from physiological effects, we're also interested in psychological traits or skills that we might learn through arts and humanities—like self-efficacy or emotion regulation. We are specifically interested in understanding how these skills are facilitated or how they could be facilitated by engagement in arts and culture.

Finally, arts and humanities can also influence how we think about ourselves and our place in the world—everything from “what is our identity” to “who am I in relation to my community.” In that context, the arts and humanities are an important part of civic education: how we understand the roles that we can play as citizens based on the kind of cultural perspective or perspectives that we have.

Irem: Do you think pandemic times helped more people to realize the consolation that can come from engagement in arts and culture?

James: Definitely. From the images of Italians on balconies singing to each other, to art museums putting their images online for anyone to be able to access them, to free book clubs going online to bring people together, the pandemic helped more people to realize the consolation that can come from engagement in arts and culture.

This brings me to what is perhaps one of the most significant flourishing outcome of the arts and culture. Arts and culture can help us connect deeply with other people. When you think about the ways in which we can connect through music, or through art, or through theater, or through literature, it is profound. When you connect with an audience or even just one other person, or even somebody who is no longer alive—for instance, if you're reading a novel, and you are connecting in a way with the novelist, or with the characters of the novel that the novelist has created—you really feel this deep sense of closeness. In a world where even before the pandemic loneliness was in epidemic proportions, engagement in arts and culture can be a powerful way to  overcome that sense of isolation.

We also have scientific evidence supporting this view. Recently, we did a representative survey in the United States on people's use of the arts and humanities. We also included some questions on the COVID situation. It appears that using the arts and humanities to cope during the pandemic is associated with higher levels of just about every measure of well-being—self-efficacy, positive emotions, meaning and purpose, etc. We have not published our findings yet; we're in the process of writing this up.

Irem: As you highlighted, the benefits of arts and humanities are manifold both for the individual and for the society. But when taken to the extreme, is there a danger that some people might regard engagement in arts and humanities as a magical cure-all?

James: Totally. This is one of the things that we try to be clear about in our research. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as just read some novels and you'll be a good person or listen to music and you will treat other people well. We don't think that the answer is simply go to the theater more, or simply go to the symphony more. What we are interested in understanding is whether there are ways in which we can engage with music or literature that would be more likely to support human flourishing.

Irem: Another potential pitfall that comes to my mind is that when psychological mechanisms through which arts and humanities operate are better understood, can this knowledge be used to distort the purpose of the humanities to certain personal ends—i.e., to manipulate people?

James: The issue here is very similar to positive psychology. For instance, you can have the strength of love of learning, and you can use that in ways that are ethical or unethical. In fact, pretty much any of the strengths, you could use in an ethical or unethical way. In this regard, ethics has got to be a central part of the application of science and humanities for good.

In general, arts and culture can be used for a lot of different purposes: for political purposes, for economic purposes (to make a lot of money), for professional purposes (people like me, I studied philosophy and I can have a career in it). It can also be used for academic purposes (to help students learn a new language, for example). Obviously, those are not necessarily all bad. But they are different from the intrinsic reasons why we have arts and culture. Those intrinsic reasons, I think, are more closely related to human flourishing.

Irem: In the endeavor to optimize the effects of humanities on well-being, I wonder if there is a danger of creating a value hierarchy across different disciplines of arts and humanities—as one discipline might have an easier time proving it is "valuable" for our well-being than another?

James: Great question. Let me give you an example. One of the participants in one of our disciplinary consultations on religious studies in theology was kind of joking but also kind of serious and said: “Well, you know, would there become this hierarchy of religions, where some religions, you know, are effective at bringing happiness and some are not.” He was worried. Clearly, that would be an abuse of this work. We really want to protect against that kind of abuse of our work. This isn't about trying to decide what is good or bad.

We are not trying to understand the value of arts and culture. I think the value of arts and culture is forever beyond our ability to measure. What we're trying to do is to look at some of the effects of engagement in arts and culture in different contexts and for different people.

The point is not to create a hierarchy: “Is Beethoven better than Beyoncé?” That is not the question we are asking. What we want to understand is whether in a particular context listening to Beethoven or Beyoncé results in a particular human flourishing outcome. And are there other contexts in which other forms of music or other forms of the humanities would be more appropriate and more helpful? We just want to understand as much as we can about those various connections.

This is similar to positive psychology in a way. We want to understand as much as we can about PERMA or other kinds of approaches. But this does not mean that we, therefore, believe that we should max out whatever positive emotions we could possibly feel in any situation. Sometimes, it is appropriate to be more moderate or to feel grief or sadness. It is not a one-size-fits-all approach. 

Irem: What factors do you think act as barriers to engage in the arts and humanities at a personal level? What is the best way for the layperson to maximize their enjoyment of the arts and humanities?

James: From the standpoint of education, some of the barriers are the funding cuts to the arts and humanities—because they are oftentimes perceived as being less important. We want our kids to learn math. We want them to learn reading. We want them to learn vocabulary. We want them to learn STEM. These are all very important. The temptation is to say, “Well, we don't have the time or the money to teach them music, or to teach them art, or to design a theater program.” This becomes a problem not only because if kids don't have access to that in school, it is harder for them to get access to it in general, but also because early childhood is an important time to get connected with arts and humanities. If you connect with dance when you're a kid, then you're much more likely to have that access for the rest of your life.

Then, in terms of leisure time, I think an important obstacle for many of us is that we do not use our leisure time all that well. We tend to work ourselves to the point of exhaustion. Then, in our leisure time, we often want to be passive: to turn on the TV and see what's there, or scroll through our social media newsfeed, or do something where we do not exert any kind of effort.

However, the arts and humanities often require some sort of effort from us. If you are going to play a musical instrument or if you are going to create an art piece, you certainly need to exert effort. But even when you are just going to view art, if you are going to do it mindfully, you need to exert effort. It is not about being entertained in some shallow way. This relates back to the important distinction Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi makes between pleasure and enjoyment.

Finally, I think all of us have some work to do, myself included. When people create a shallow movie that does not have much residual value, then it deprives us of the ability to use that time to connect more deeply with each other. But then you must ask the question: Why do those movies do so well? It is because people like you and me buy tickets to those movies. In other words, the public is supporting these kinds of less eudaimonic uses of arts and culture.

We need to observe how we spend our lives and the choices that we make. We must be careful about what we put in our minds because what captivates us is not always what nurtures us. Do we consume or engage in things that are more likely to bring us deeper enjoyment or satisfaction, or do we spend our time and dollars supporting things and rewarding people who create content that is captivating but not necessarily nurturing?

Quite frankly, we have at our fingertips more cultural richness than any human beings have had at any time in history. We have this availability, and yet I think we often do a poor job at managing it. So, I would hope that the work in the Positive Humanities can help to catalyze a cultural shift, where we look at culture from the standpoint of what it can say to us, and how it can help us to grow and advance our own well-being and the well-being of the communities in which we live. 

Irem: What are some practices James Pawelski himself uses in his daily life to harness the power of Positive Humanities?

James: It's a question that I've asked myself a lot.

It's easy to get caught up in studying about or working in the field of the Positive Humanities, and I'm delighted by how that work is going. Humanities and Human Flourishing Lab has been designated a National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab. That’s really exciting. Right now, we are also working on ten different books for Oxford University Press. In another year or two, there will be a lot of resources out there—that certainly comes with challenges, but it also comes with lots of flow. Just this morning, I was working on one of those volumes. That's an interdisciplinary humanities volume, where chapters are written by experts. We have a chapter written by a dean who is a leader in Theatre Studies. We have another chapter written by a former chair of the Literary Studies department here at UPenn. Another chapter is written by a former chair of the Philosophy Department at Emory University. Reading about their ideas and how those ideas connect to human flourishing is fascinating. For instance, how can theater be understood from a human flourishing standpoint, or how can philosophy be understood in terms of well-being? I get excited about these questions. For me, as a philosopher, that is a way of engaging in the Positive Humanities.

More on the arts side of things, I enjoy listening to music. Music, I find, can have a calming effect when I'm feeling anxious about where this work is going, and how it is going to work out in the end. Another thing I like to do is to memorize poetry. I think that is a lost art. It’s great to have poetry at our fingertips, as we do on our smartphones these days. But it’s even better to have poetry in our heads—and in our hearts. Memorizing poetry can be really powerful: it can be both calming and soothing. I use it to soothe myself—and also to cultivate my creativity. As I recite poems, I get new and deeper insights into them, and into life.

When you read a poem, you read it and you're like, “Oh, that's cool.” Then, you tend to move on to the next one. I think part of what is really important about engagement with arts and culture is not rushing it. The humanities don't hurry, I like to say. It is about stopping and immersing ourselves in these things. Memorization is a way of being able to immerse ourselves in something. I can recite a poem, when I'm outside or when I'm inside, earlier in the day or later in the day. Each time, I come at the poem from a different perspective. It is the same poem, so it brings me back to this kind of familiarity, but there is also the novelty that comes from reciting the poem in a brand new present moment.

Irem: I am sure our readers will be curious to know which poem you most recently recited. Maybe, it can be an inspiration for all of us to start memorizing poetry!

James: The one that I have most recently recited is The Road Less Travelled by Robert Frost, which I think has some powerful images. It is fun to marinate in them.

Irem: Is there anything else you would like to mention before we end the interview?

James: This work is huge—and hugely interesting and hugely important. Part of what we have done since the start of the humanities and human flourishing project in 2014 is to create an international network of scholars, researchers, and practitioners. We want to continue this process because we want this to be like positive psychology—inviting for people to be a part of. We want people to be able to find ways to engage in the Positive Humanities themselves and to further the work. So, we love to hear from people who have ideas about how to advance these efforts in any number of ways. We also love to hear from people who know about foundations or individuals that they think might be interested in providing resources—large or small—for us to continue. That is one difference between being an individual philosopher writing books versus leading a lab. In the lab, you can only do what you have the funding to do. Hence, we are always looking at that side of things as well.

You can find information about how to contact us on our website (which also has much more information about the Humanities and Human Flourishing Lab). (https://www.humanitiesandhumanflourishing.org/contactus)

In conclusion, I just want to encourage people to make time for the Positive Humanities, to engage in arts and culture in the ways that resonate most with you as you cultivate individual and collective human flourishing.