Search

In 29 informal interviews and 91 online questionnaires, we asked people about secular pilgrimages mostly to places associated with writers, musicians, and visual artists. Pilgrims often felt strong emotions at their destinations: mean ratings of how moved they felt on 0-to-10 scales in the informal and online studies were 6.56 and 6.14, respectively. In the online study 26 people made visits to writers' locations, 47 to musicians' locations, and 18 to locations of artists of other kinds. We compared these with people who had not made pilgrimages. Higher life stress experienced during the previous five years predicted whether people went on artistic pilgrimages during that time. There was, however, no association between making a pilgrimage with overall well-being, or with fantasy and perspective taking. Some participants who did more reading were disappointed by their visits to places associated with writers. Motives of art pilgrimage include renewal and cultural change, therapy, curiosity, homage, meaningful experience, and enhancement of visited places. Art pilgrims take with them a piece of inner imagination so that it can become more complete in their outer perception of the place they visit. An intense emotion at a destination indicates the importance of the artist to the pilgrim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for cognitive closure has been found to be associated with a variety of suboptimal information processing strategies, leading to decreased creativity and rationality. This experiment tested the hypothesis that exposure to fictional short stories, as compared with exposure to nonfictional essays, will reduce need for cognitive closure. One hundred participants were assigned to read either an essay or a short story (out of a set of 8 essays and 8 short stories matched for length, reading difficulty, and interest). After reading, their need for cognitive closure was assessed. As hypothesized, when compared to participants in the essay condition, participants in the short story condition experienced a significant decrease in self-reported need for cognitive closure. The effect was particularly strong for participants who were habitual readers (of either fiction or non-fiction). These findings suggest that reading fictional literature could lead to better procedures of processing information generally, including those of creativity.

Discusses the book 'The Varieties of Religious Experience' by William James. Autobiographical accounts presented by James; Steps toward seeing how the accounts may contribute to a contemporary psychology of emotions and transformation of the self.