An empirical investigation of guilty pleasures

In everyday language, the expression “guilty pleasure” refers to instances where one feels bad about enjoying a particular artwork. Thus, one’s experience of guilty pleasure seems to involve the feeling that one should not enjoy this particular artwork and by implication the belief that there are norms according to which some aesthetic responses are more appropriate than others. One natural assumption would be that these norms are first and foremost aesthetic norms. However, this suggestion runs directly against recent findings in experimental philosophy, according to which most people deny the existence of aesthetic norms. Through three studies, we investigated people's experience of guilty pleasures and the norms that underlie this experience. We tentatively conclude that guilty pleasures are more often connected to one’s personal norms and social expectations than to properly aesthetic norms.