ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief review of the bibliographic production in Brazilian journals dedicated to image-based research in social psychology over the last twenty years. It presents three research models used by the Postgraduate Program in Social Psychology at the University of Sao Paulo's Institute of Psychology, which represent some specific contributions. The chapter demonstrates the importance of the concept of aesthetic experience; not by restricting aesthetics to the artistic field, but as a fundamental dimension in the production of meaning in everyday life, understood through images in the domain called "social aesthetics". Understanding aesthetic experience through the concept of engagement comes out of the criticism of the heritage of nineteenth-century aesthetic theories and the proposition of an environmental aesthetics as the foundation of social life and political action. The chapter concludes that this theoretical conception represents an important contribution to image-based research in social psychology.
