📄 social_science

Development and psychometric validation of the Fresco Experience Scale: a multidimensional measure of sacred-image engagement

This study developed and validated the multidimensional Fresco Experience Scale (FES) using a sample of 778 Serbian adults, confirming its six-factor structure (Visual-Aesthetic, Emotional, Cognitive, Communicative, Spiritual-Transformative, and Sociocultural) as a reliable and theoretically interpretable instrument for assessing engagement with Orthodox church frescoes.

Original authors: Ivan Stojilović, Tijana Todić Jakšić, Aleksandra Dimitrijević, Isidora Komadina, Jugoslava Rakić Mladenović

Published 2026-07-01

📖 5 min read🧠 Deep dive

CC BY 4.0

Original authors: Ivan Stojilović, Tijana Todić Jakšić, Aleksandra Dimitrijević, Isidora Komadina, Jugoslava Rakić Mladenović

Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ✨ This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer

Imagine walking into an old, beautiful church in Serbia. You aren't just looking at paintings on a wall; you are surrounded by frescoes (paintings on plaster) that tell stories, hold deep religious meaning, and are part of a ritual with chanting, incense, and specific postures.

For a long time, scientists had a hard time measuring how people experience these frescoes. Existing tools were like trying to measure a complex symphony with a single ruler: they either just asked "Do you like art?" (too simple) or "How religious are you?" (too broad). They missed the specific, layered feeling of standing in front of a sacred image.

This paper is about building a new, custom-made tool called the Fresco Experience Scale (FES) to capture that specific feeling. Here is the story of how they built it and what they found, explained simply.

The Problem: One Size Doesn't Fit All

The researchers realized that when you look at a sacred fresco, your brain does many things at once. You might notice the colors, feel a shiver of awe, think about the history, feel like the image is "speaking" to you, feel a spiritual shift, or feel a sense of belonging to your community.

Trying to squeeze all of that into one single score is like trying to describe a delicious stew by just saying "It's hot." You need to know if it's spicy, salty, sweet, or savory. The researchers wanted a tool that could taste all the different flavors of the fresco experience.

The Solution: A Six-Flavor Recipe

They developed a questionnaire with 36 questions (and shorter versions with 30 or 24 questions) that breaks the experience down into six distinct "flavors" or dimensions:

Visual-Aesthetic (The Eye): Do you notice the beauty, the colors, and the composition? (e.g., "The painting feels harmonious.")
Emotional (The Heart): What feelings does it stir up? (e.g., Calm, awe, sadness, or reverence.)
Cognitive (The Brain): Does it make you think or learn something? (e.g., "It makes me reconsider the meaning of a symbol.")
Communicative (The Conversation): Do you feel like the image is talking to you? (e.g., "It feels like a silent dialogue.")
Spiritual-Transformative (The Soul): Does it feel like a holy presence or a personal change? (e.g., "I feel an inner shift after seeing it.")
Sociocultural (The Tribe): Does it connect you to your history or community? (e.g., "This helps preserve our identity.")

The Experiment: Testing the Recipe

The team asked 778 adults in Serbia (mostly young, mostly women, and mostly Orthodox Christians) to fill out this survey. They also asked them about their general religiosity, their daily spiritual feelings, and their personality traits to see if the new scale made sense.

What they found:

The Six-Flavor Model Worked Best: When they analyzed the data, the six-part model fit the reality much better than a single "one-size-fits-all" model. People didn't just have a "general fresco feeling"; they had specific reactions in each of the six areas.
Reliability: The questions were consistent. If someone liked the "Visual" part, they tended to answer the other Visual questions similarly.
It's Unique: The scale measured something specific. It correlated with how religious people were and how much they loved art, but it wasn't just a measure of being religious or just a measure of liking art. It was a unique mix.
The "Spiritual" and "Emotional" Mix: Interestingly, the "Emotional" and "Spiritual-Transformative" parts were very closely linked. It's hard to separate feeling awe from feeling a spiritual shift in this context, but the researchers found they were still distinct enough to keep as separate categories.

The Short Versions

The researchers also created two shorter versions of the test (FES-30 and FES-24) for people who don't have time for the full 36 questions.

The Verdict: The shorter versions worked almost as well as the long one. The FES-24 (24 questions) seemed to be the best balance of being short but still accurate. However, the authors warn that these short versions need to be tested on new groups of people before they are used widely, just to be sure they aren't just "lucky" with this specific group.

Important Limitations (The Fine Print)

The paper is very honest about what it can't do yet:

Who took the test? Most participants were young, female, and Orthodox Christian. The tool works great for them, but we don't know if it works exactly the same way for older people, men, or people of different faiths (like the Muslim participants in the study).
Comparing Groups: You can compare men and women using this scale, but you cannot simply compare the average scores of Orthodox Christians vs. non-Orthodox people. The way they answer the questions is so different that a direct comparison would be unfair (like comparing apples to oranges).
Ceiling Effect: Many people gave the highest possible scores, especially for the "Sociocultural" part. This suggests that for many, the frescoes are so important to their identity that they can't imagine scoring lower, which makes it hard to tell the difference between "very engaged" and "extremely engaged."

The Bottom Line

The researchers successfully built a new "thermometer" for measuring how people engage with Orthodox church frescoes. Instead of just asking "Do you like it?", this tool asks, "How does it make you feel, think, connect, and change?"

It confirms that looking at sacred art is a complex, multi-layered experience involving the eyes, the heart, the mind, and the community. While the tool is currently best suited for Orthodox settings in Serbia, it provides a solid foundation for understanding how sacred images touch the human soul.

Technical Summary: Development and Psychometric Validation of the Fresco Experience Scale (FES)

Problem and Rationale
Despite the integral role of sacred images in Orthodox liturgical life—where frescoes function not merely as art but as theological, ritual, and communal anchors—no validated multidimensional instrument exists to assess engagement with these specific visual forms. Existing measures of aesthetic appreciation focus on secular art and omit sacred presence, while general religiosity scales assess broad dispositions rather than object-specific responses to visual encounters in ritual contexts. Consequently, the psychological complexity of fresco engagement, which intertwines perceptual, affective, interpretive, and identity-related processes, cannot be adequately captured by current tools. This study addresses this gap by developing and validating the Fresco Experience Scale (FES), a measure designed to capture the multidimensional nature of engagement with Orthodox church frescoes.

Methodology
The study employed a mixed-methods approach culminating in a psychometric validation study with a sample of 778 adults from Serbia (mean age = 27.97; 78.7% female; 76.1% Orthodox Christian). The development process involved iterative item generation based on aesthetic and religious frameworks, qualitative refinement through interviews and visual-response tasks, and exploratory factor analysis to establish a six-factor structure.

The primary validation phase utilized Ordinal Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) with Weighted Least Squares Mean and Variance Adjusted (WLSMV) estimation on polychoric correlations. The study compared three theoretical models:

A unidimensional model.
A correlated six-factor model.
A higher-order model.

Additionally, the study evaluated:

Reliability: Internal consistency (Cronbach's $\alpha$ and McDonald's $\omega$ ).
Construct Validity: Convergent validity with proximal criteria (aesthetic engagement, religiosity, daily spiritual experiences, national identification) and divergent validity with broad dispositional traits (Extraversion, Neuroticism, Narcissism, Need for Closure).
Measurement Invariance: Tested across gender and religious affiliation (Orthodox vs. non-Orthodox) using multi-group ordinal CFA.
Short Forms: Two abbreviated versions (FES-30 and FES-24) were constructed and evaluated for structural integrity and psychometric performance within the same sample.

Key Contributions and Scale Structure
The FES is a 36-item instrument comprising six distinct facets, each rated on a 7-point Likert scale:

Visual-Aesthetic: Attention to formal visual qualities (color, composition) and aesthetic appreciation.
Emotional: Affective responses elicited by frescoes (e.g., calm, awe, reverence).
Cognitive: Interpretive engagement and meaning-making regarding iconography, theology, or history.
Communicative: The phenomenological sense that the image conveys messages or "addresses" the viewer (silent dialogue).
Spiritual-Transformative: Experiences construed as spiritually significant, involving sacred presence, contemplative absorption, or personal renewal.
Sociocultural: Identity- and heritage-related meanings, including belonging, continuity, and stewardship.

Results

Model Fit: The correlated six-factor model demonstrated adequate fit (CFI = .953, TLI = .949, RMSEA = .082, SRMR = .050) and significantly outperformed the unidimensional alternative. A higher-order model fit acceptably but was incrementally weaker.
Reliability and Validity: All six subscales showed high internal consistency ( $\alpha$ = .88–.95; $\omega$ = .88–.96). Convergent validity was supported by strong positive correlations with aesthetic engagement, religiosity, and national identification. Associations with daily spiritual experiences were positive but weaker, supporting the scale's specificity to object- and context-focused engagement. Divergent validity was confirmed by weak associations with broad personality traits.
Factor Distinction: While the Emotional and Spiritual-Transformative facets showed high intercorrelation ( $r$ = .89), statistical tests (DIFFTEST) confirmed they are empirically distinguishable. Regression analyses suggested partial differentiation: Emotional was more closely tied to general aesthetic engagement, while Spiritual-Transformative showed stronger unique links to national identification and daily spiritual experience.
Measurement Invariance:
- Gender: Full metric and scalar invariance were supported, allowing for latent mean comparisons.
- Religious Affiliation: Configural invariance and partial metric invariance were established. However, scalar (threshold) invariance was rejected, precluding valid latent mean comparisons between Orthodox and non-Orthodox participants.
Short Forms: Both the FES-30 and FES-24 retained the six-factor structure with fit indices comparable to or better than the full scale. The FES-24 demonstrated the most favorable balance of brevity and psychometric performance, though results are considered preliminary due to single-sample evaluation.

Significance and Claims
The authors claim that the FES provides a reliable, theoretically interpretable, and multidimensional measure of sacred-image engagement, moving beyond global religiosity scores or general aesthetic liking. The scale supports the view that sacred-image encounters in liturgical settings are integrated yet distinguishable processes involving perceptual, affective, cognitive, communicative, spiritual, and sociocultural dimensions.

The study emphasizes that the FES is currently most strongly validated for Orthodox or Orthodox-proximal settings. The authors explicitly caution against generalizing mean-level comparisons across religious denominations based on the current data, noting that the observed non-invariance reflects a specific Orthodox-Muslim contrast within a Serbian regional context where religion, ethnicity, and heritage are intertwined. The paper positions the FES as a tool for researchers to profile differentiated modes of engagement and to test how specific features of sacred visual environments relate to well-being and identity, while acknowledging the need for future cross-validation in broader cultural contexts and independent replication of the short forms.