How We Perceive Certain Features Neurologically Can Harm Mental Health

Where do our senses of like and dislike come from regarding physical appearances of the objects and people around us? Is it genetic? Learned? Is it taught to us by society? There are neurological mechanisms at play every time we perceive a person or thing that determine whether or not we are attracted to whatever it is we're looking at. In "Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder or an Objective Truth," Grcywacz et. al suggest that, evolutionarily, we have developed our senses of like and dislike through the rewards systems in the brain, as one bad perceptive decision could mean life or death. They state that "in biological contexts symmetry is often a signal of good health and disruption of symmetry can signal genetic or natural abnormalities." These concepts are exemplified through various art mediums, as Dietrich et. al explore in "(Neuro)Aesthetics: Beauty, ugliness, and ethics." They suggest that the complexity of nature is simplified through art. We can understand art in this context because it has a nueroaesthetic foundation. "From a neuroaesthetic point of view, characteristics such as beautiful or ugly can be examined from the concept of art on the basis of the perception of art. Ethical implications of aesthetic experiences can be derived." Exaggeration is one of the eight heuristics introduced by Ramachandran and Hirstein that were created to explain how we perceive art, Dietrich et. al claim. "This is primarily intended to map the central characteristics of an object and thus to evoke strong responses. This occurs especially in caricatures, where physical features are deliberately exaggerated to be better recognized and to trigger a reaction on the part of the viewer." This can be one method of how beauty standards are developed, but ethically, it can cause issues with how certain groups are perceived in society, as many traits are held to similar standards throughout a certain area. Grcywacz et. al suggest that our "objective" sense of what is beautiful and what isn't as a collective society comes from our shared cognitive responses to certain features. If the traits of certain ethnic groups are not seen as beautiful by a collective society, it can lower the overall self-esteem of the people belonging to those groups because they are not correctly or morally represented in the forms of media they consume. This is not the fault of any one specific individual, but the gradual but noticeable narrowing of what is seen as beautiful can be extremely harmful for many people. 

Grzywacz, N. M., Aleem, H., Pombo, M., & Correa-Herran, I. (2019). Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder or an Objective Truth? A Neuroscientific Answer. Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24326-5_11

Dietrich, P., & Knieper, T. (2021). (Neuro)Aesthetics: Beauty, ugliness, and ethics. PsyCh Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/pchj.478