因何而美:旅游审美体验的溯源与机制

Why We Find It Beautiful:A Reflection on Tourism Aesthetic Experience and Research on Its Mental Mechanisms

随着审美活动逐渐成为生产、交换与消费系统中的结构性组成部分,厘清旅游者审美体验的心理结构维度及内部互动机理至关重要。援引认知心理学的双系统理论,文章提出了旅游审美心理机制的理论框架,选取典型审美个体与审美群体样本,并结合案例分析与社会网络分析方法,论证了包括"美的知觉-美的理解-美的共创-美的审视-美的表达-美的转移"在内的旅游审美体验的6个心理结构维度,各维度循环往复,实现启发机制到系统机制再回归启发机制的审美心理过程,游客在螺旋式循环的心理活动中实现了由浅入深的旅游审美体验,并最终超越感官刺激下的审美偏狭,实现了逐步递进的美之生命体验。

With improvements in cultural literacy,aesthetic activities have gradually become a structural component in systems of social production,exchange,and consumption.Tourism is a comprehensive,important aesthetic activity that integrates the beauties of nature,art,and social life;it possesses deep connotations and high expectations—especially regarding social aesthetic education.However,with respect to the attention economy,the important,complex mental mechanisms related to aesthetic subjects in tourism have been largely ignored:increasing sensory stimulation and catering to public interests have become the priority strategy of tourism enterprises.Accordingly,it is necessary to clarify the mental mechanisms of the tourism aesthetic experience from a micro-perspective.That leads to addressing the following question:how can some tourists achieve an aesthetic experience though others cannot?By adopting and expanding the conventional concept of the four elements of aesthetic psychology,the present study applies dual-process theory(heuristic-systematic model);it presents a theoretical framework of the mental mechanisms for the tourism aesthetic experience.This research combines a case study with social network analysis,and it selected typical samples as empirical data.Notably,this study examined Xu Xiake’s Travel Notes as an individual aesthetic sample,and it investigated online travel notes as aesthetic group samples.This study makes three overall conclusions.First,this investigation identified six dimensions of the mental mechanisms for the tourism aesthetic experience:aesthetic perception;aesthetic understanding;aesthetic co-creation;aesthetic interpretation;aesthetic expression;and aesthetic transfer.Those six dimensions follow the cycle of heuristic system to systematic system to heuristic system;in that way,they constitute the complex process of the tourism aesthetic experience.In that continuous cycle,tourists achieve the aesthetic experience from a shallow to a deep level;finally,they attain improved personal aesthetic ability from a low to a high level.Second,the heuristic system(aesthetic perception,aesthetic expression,and aesthetic transfer),which does not involve many cognitive resources,plays a key role in the whole mental mechanisms of the tourism aesthetic experience.In particular,aesthetic perception is the subjects’apparent perception of aesthetic objects.Conversely,aesthetic expression and aesthetic transfer are the result and sublimation of the mental mechanisms;they are indispensable elements in the dynamic nature of the aesthetic psychological mechanism.Thus,the present study emphasizes the guidance and return of the tourism aesthetic experience to daily life.Third,the systematic system(aesthetic understanding,aesthetic co-creation,and aesthetic interpretation),which involves many cognitive resources,reflects the self-transcendence and initiatives of tourists as aesthetic subjects.Aesthetic interpretation is closely related to aesthetic empathy:aesthetic subjects experience that inanimate aesthetic objects are imbued with human will and emotion,and such objects even resonate with the latter two factors,thereby attaining a high level in the aesthetic realm.