Links Between The Creative Practice Of Art And Empathy In Existing Literature

In the body of research investigating the connections between the creative practice of art and empathy there are quite a few individual studies, but a distinct lack of literature reviews or meta analyses. Literature reviews and meta analyses help to give a more clear picture of what the body of research on a topic indicates more than individual research studies and thus are an important tool for being able to answer larger questions regarding a topic such as the one posed by this paper. That is: What are the links between the creative practice of art and empathy? This review searched for existing peer reviewed empirical articles on the topic of artistic practices and empathy. Twenty five articles were found and analyzed for thematic similarities and findings. Overall, the literature shows some qualitative evidence in support of a correlation between various creative practices of art and empathy. The modalities of music, and visual and literary arts show the strongest findings in favor of a correlation between those modality and empathy. However, the body of research is lacking in experimental designs, contains many poorly designed studies, and has some drawbacks from the over-reliance on qualitative data to support their hypotheses.