Introduction to Precognitive Aesthetics: a Jungian approach

This paper anticipates some results of a research conducted in an innovative way through the most pervasive social network (Facebook) in order to explore a new investigation field based on the intersection among Analytical Psychology, Empirical Aesthetics and Information Technology. Exploiting the system of 'like' and 'share', on which the platform is based, we have analyzed the aesthetic preferences by a sample of over 10,000 users worldwide, to which thousands of images of artworks were submitted. It was observed that some specific compositional elements within the artworks are able to activate the aesthetic preferences of the perceivers, revealing the universal Archetypal Forms of the Beauty and Aesthetic Pleasure that are inside the Collective Unconscious. The steady repetition of the preferences related to the same compositional elements has made possible to predict the subsequent aesthetic choices by the viewers, laying the foundations of the 'Precognitive Aesthetics'.