Rhett Diessner - Understanding the Beauty Appreciation Trait: Empirical Research on Seeking Beauty in All Things

Cover illustration: photographed by Heidi Simmons

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Julia Barrett and Tyler, Riggs, and Boone (for two years of Fridays full of poetry, music, and art); the Delva Family (for so many spiritually beautiful Wednesday evenings in your home); Rachelle and Jake Genths (for being beautys cheerleaders); Angelika Gsewell (for all the unheard beautiful music and for being such a beautiful colleague); Jonathan Haidt (for many years of encouragement and forelevation); Andrew Hanson (so many years of beautiful lunchtime conversations); RJ and Jess Harper (for beautiful nature and beautiful spirituality); Ravi Iyer (for long-term altruistic support of my Labs beauty research); Peter Khan (editor extraordinaire ofEcopsychology, and for believing I had something evocative to say about natures beauty), Kavous Monadjemi (sigh); Naim Nabil-i-Akbar (for teaching me about spiritual, musical, poetic, and linguistic beauty); Ferris and Linda Paisano (for your spiritual beauty and all the beautiful adventures we had together over decades; may your wisdom guide the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee); Bob and Patty Parrish (for doing your best to help me appreciate the beauty of Jazz, and your beautiful photography, and your skills in gustatory beauty); Rico Pohling (for beautiful collegiality in all things beautiful; may the Buddha ever bless you. Go Katrin!); PSYC 414 Psychology of Beauty students (for taking a chance with a strange course and teaching me about teaching beauty); Tim Richel and Yuki and Lio (for our adventures in beautiful philosophical ideas); Julio and Paola Savi (for mentoring me concerning every mode of beauty: natural, artistic, moral, and spiritualand for teaching me a lived aesthetic attitude and hugely influencing my aesthetic emotion repertoire); Noah and Lana Schuerman (for natural and musical beauty); Jordan Tomczyk (for your beautiful friendship and beautiful music); and Rainn & Holiday & Walter Wilson (for your beautiful thespian work and your beautifully actualized love of our family and Holidays beautiful writing).

Special appreciation of my children Jaleh, David, and Random; our love for each other has been wonderful for me and is beautiful.

Much gratitude for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of all or various chapters: Kianna Arthur (most thorough!), Catherine Baumgartner, Random Diessner, Wendy Diessner, Christoph Klebl, Julio Savi, Heidi Simmons, Ines Schindler, Naoaki Takeda, and Oshin Vartanian. Special thanks to Adan Saucedo for preparing the author index. You all improved the book; all infelicities are mine.

I also thank my editor at Palgrave Macmillan, Rachel Daniel, for approaching me and suggesting this project; and I thank my assistant editor Madison Allums for all her patience and answering a thousand emails of questions.