An Experimental View of How Beauty is Perceived

         It is no surprise that beauty is perceived differently in each person but is there a reason why there is usually a consensus as to why something is beautiful? Researchers have found that neural circuitry plays a role in beauty processing as well as environment and culture. Deciphering beauty is still a hard concept to grasp for most researchers, but many have speculated as to why and how we find something “beautiful” 

In the study "Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder or an Objective Truth? A Neuroscientific answer" by Norberto Grzywacz et al, the idea of beauty and how it is perceived by our brains was examined using fMRI imaging while a person was given a stimulus such as a portrait and the person then rates its beauty. This study shows that beauty is subjective and how different cultures see beauty differently. The researchers also speculate how symmetry has always been thought to be what makes things beautiful because of its processing as a result of shared dedicated neural circuitry. It was also said that reinforcement-learning and motivational state circuitries in the brain are big factors in deciding whether something is beautiful or not. When looking back on different eras and time frames, there was many different types of beauty trend that maybe today would not be seen as beautiful. The researchers focused on the “Fluency Theory”. The fluency theory focuses on the viewer of the image more than the object in the image. This theory links evolution of aesthetics and mentions that if an image is simple and more flued to the perceiver, it is then easier for the brain to process, resulting in a more aesthetic response. This theory also shows that the brain learns aesthetic values that come from culture and environment.  Neuroaesthetics is complex and Norberto Gryzwacz et al argues that beauty is processed both objectively and subjectively in the perceivers brain. 

 

In the article “A Group’s Physical Attractiveness Is Greater Than the Average Attractiveness of Its Members: The Group Attractiveness Effect” By Yvette Van Osch et al.. Using a study group of 158 university students, the researchers examine how attractiveness is perceived in a group setting. The study included a series of ratings of different groups attractiveness. These groups included female, male, and mixed-gendered groups. The results showed that people tended to selectively focus and favor to the group members most attractive person and that the person who is “most attractive” had a larger impact on the whole group. The researchers explored the GA-effect, which is defined as group attractiveness effect. They focused on two different ways to explain this effect. The first explanation reveled that selection attention is caused by someone focusing their attention on a group members most attractive person. This selective attention causes the other group members to look “less attractive”. The second explanation was the Gestalt Principle of Similarity, this principle states that group members that appear more similar would have a larger GA-effect, which means that they would be perceived more attractive.

 

Both these articles gauge on how people find something attractive and while it is obvious that many factors affect the perception of beauty, there are some common themes when looking at beauty and attractiveness. These themes include culture, environment and fluency. Gryzwacz et al, does an explementary job on why beauty may be perceived in certain ways. However, the article by Osch et al, shows an experimental example of beauty being perceived in a group setting, the results show the correlation of environment and how a perceiver views attractiveness. It also shows that similarity increases attractiveness as well. Could this be due to the Fluency theory? One can speculate that if a group of people look parallel and are more “flued” in appearance, it is easier for a brain to process the group members, resulting in a more attractive perception. Gryzwacz et al,’s research is linked to Osh et al’s research because it shows that environment and fluency plays a role in how a perceiver views attractiveness. All in all, there is no clear consensus of beauty , but these researchers give us some understanding and show us the common themes of how we perceive attraction and beauty.

 

Citations

Aleem, H., Pombo, M., Correa-Herran, I., & Grzywacz, N. M. (1970, January 1). Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder or an Objective Truth? A Neuroscientific Answer. SpringerLink. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-24326-5_11. 

Osch, Y. V., Blanken, I., Meijs, M. H. J., & Wolferen, J. V. (2015). A Group’s Physical Attractiveness Is Greater Than the Average Attractiveness of Its Members. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(4), 559–574. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167215572799