I think that the "pleasure" one gets from art is longer lasting than that provided by a piece of candy. This could be easily tested by doing a series of evaluations at later dates.

I used scare quotes as it seems misguided to attempt to analyze such diverse points of human experience with the metric of "pleasure" alone.

Art and similar activities carry much more meaning and significance than candy, thus have they have a larger effect on an individual's life and broader society. Surprisingly, this obvious point was not mentioned in the article.

Of course, we may not yet have instruments that can accurately assess these more nuanced differences.

Isn't the whole point of studying these things to find out if what you're saying is true? While it is possible you are correct, I'd really hesitate to say it's obvious in any way, especially as there is a large swathe of population that doesn't particularly care about art. On the other hand, the segment that really doesn't at all like candy is much smaller.

Oh sure, I'm all for studying it. But we shouldn't lose sight of the broader context.

> there is a large swathe of population that doesn't particularly care about art

Ah yes... "Art" is a tricky term. I think things such as movies, music, books, etc are also relevant here, and are considered forms of art. I might define art as "creatively expressing ideas through an imprecise medium".

Of course, as they say, anything can be art. My definition fits that -- all expression, even mathematic and scientific, contain some imprecision.