Helmut Leder (born 1963 in Bardenberg, Germany) is a Professor of

Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

at the Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods, Faculty of Psychology of the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

, in

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. He is currently Head of Department of Basic Psychological Research and Head of Cognitive Sciences Research Platform. He received his Degree in

in 1990 from the

RWTH Aachen University RWTH Aachen University (), also known as North Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen, Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen, Technical University of Aachen, University of Aachen, or ''Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hoch ...

, and his PhD in

in 1996 from

University of Fribourg The University of Fribourg (french: Université de Fribourg; german: Universität Freiburg) is a public university located in Fribourg, Switzerland. The roots of the university can be traced back to 1580, when the notable Jesuit Peter Canisius ...

. His research within the field of

experimental aesthetics Experimental aesthetics is a field of psychology founded by Gustav Theodor Fechner in the 19th century. According to Fechner, aesthetics is an experiential perception which is empirically comprehensible in light of the characteristics of the subj ...

has aimed to clarify the psychological processes involved in the appreciation of

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

and

aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...

. From 2014 until 2018 he was the president of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics. In autumn 2018 he is a fellow of the Italian Academy at Columbia University.

Early career and research

From 1996 to 2007 Leder held diverse positions and was visiting researcher at several institutions, including the University of Stirling, the

, the Freie Universität Berlin, the Advanced Telecommunication Research Institute International,

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

, the

, the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor),

USC USC most often refers to: * University of South Carolina, a public research university ** University of South Carolina System, the main university and its satellite campuses **South Carolina Gamecocks, the school athletic program * University of ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

and at

UCSD The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

and CUNY N.Y and Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, he was Visiting Professor in Philosophy of Aesthetics at the Université Paris I - Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France, Sept-Oct. 2017, in 2018, he was Visiting Professor at Keio University, Tokyo, and from September to December 208, Fellow of the Italian Academy of Advanced Studies of America, at Columbia University, New York. His early research was focused on the perceptual processes that underlie the perception and recognition of

human faces The face is the front of an animal's head that features the eyes, nose and mouth, and through which animals express many of their emotions. The face is crucial for human identity, and damage such as scarring or developmental deformities may aff ...

, especially the processing of configural and relational information. Within this general domain he developed a research line into the factors that contribute to the evaluation of

facial attractiveness Physical attractiveness is the degree to which a person's physical features are considered aesthetically pleasing or beautiful. The term often implies sexual attractiveness or desirability, but can also be distinct from either. There are many ...

. Another of his main topics was the impact of

design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

on valuation and

usability Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a soft ...

, especially applied to car interiors and eyeglasses.

Current position and research

Since 2004 Leder is a Full Professor at the

, and he has been the Head of the Department of Basic Psychological Research and Research Methods from 2004-2020. Since 2017 he is also Head of Cognitive Sciences Research Platform at University of Vienna. In 2004 he also established the Research Focus on Psychological Aesthetics, the EVAL (Empirical visual Aesthetics research lab) through which, in addition to continuing his prior research lines, he has developed a broad research program on the psychology of aesthetics and the arts. This program was introduced as a cognitive model of the appreciation of art in a paper published in the British Journal of Psychology. This model has served to frame many studies on the cognitive foundations of art,

neuroaesthetics Neuroesthetics ( or neuroaesthetics) is a relatively recent sub-discipline of empirical aesthetics. Empirical aesthetics takes a scientific approach to the study of aesthetic perceptions of art, music, or any object that can give rise to aesthet ...

product design Product design as a verb is to create a new product to be sold by a business to its customers. A very broad coefficient and effective generation and development of ideas through a process that leads to new products. Thus, it is a major aspect of n ...

, and web design, among other fields. A citation analysis reveals that it is the most cited of all papers published in the British Journal of Psychology in 2004 and the second most cited since its publication He has research projects to study facial attractiveness, appreciation of art, the brain on art, and joint research projects with art history at University of Vienna (Prof. Rosenberg) and University of Applied Arts, Vienna. His team has also published a number of museum studies, in collaboration with the Museum Belvedere, the Musa, and the Albertina, with Galerie Raum mit Licht, Vienna, as well as with other international institutions. Part of his research was also featured in the 2018-19 Exhibition ''Beauty'' by Sagmeister & Walsh, first in the MAK in Vienna, later in Frankfurt and Hamburg.

Awards

Leder’s research record has been recognized with awards from some of the main professional associations in the domain of psychological aesthetics. In 2002 he received the Alexander-Gottlieb-Baumgarten-Award of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics. In 2004 he received the Daniel E. Berlyne Award of the American Psychological Association (APA), Division 10: Society for the Psychology of Aesthetics Creativity and the Arts. In 2008 he was awarded with an International Fellowship of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics. In 2020 h was warded Arnheim Award of the APA American Psychological Association, Div.10, for Outstanding Achievement in Psychology and the Arts.

Selected publications

* Leder, H. and Bruce, V. (2000). When inverted faces are recognized: The role of configural information in face recognition. ''Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A-Human Experimental Psychology'', 53: 513-536. * Leder, H., Belke, B., Oeberst, A. and Augustin, D. (2004). A model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgements. ''British Journal of Psychology'', 95: 489-508. * Leder, H., Goller, J., Forster, M., Schlageter, L., & Paul, M. A. (2017). Face inversion increases attractiveness. ''Acta Psychologica'', ''178''(July 2017), 25–31. DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2017.05.005 * Pelowski, M., Markey, P., Lauring, J., & Leder, H. (2016). Visualizing the impact of art: An update and comparison of current psychological models of art experience. F''rontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10'', 160. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00160 * Leder, H. and Carbon, C. C. (2006). Face-specific configural processing of relational information. ''British Journal of Psychology'', 97: 19-29. *Leder, H., & Nadal, M. (2014). Ten years of a model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments: The aesthetic episode – Developments and challenges in empirical aesthetics. ''British Journal of Psychology''. 443-464. DOI: 10.1111/bjop.1208. *Pelowski, P., Markey, M., Forster, M., Gerger, G., & Leder, H. (2017). Move me, astonish me… delight my eyes and brain: The Vienna Integrated Model of top–down and bottom–up processes in Art Perception (VIMAP) and corresponding affective, evaluative, and neurophysiological correlates. Physics of Life Reviews.

References

External links

Helmut Leder's homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leder, Helmut 1963 births Living people German psychologists RWTH Aachen University alumni Cognitive psychologists Emotion psychologists