CROWDSCIENCE:
Why do we find things beautiful?

Every week on BBC World Service, CrowdScience answers listeners’ questions on life, Earth and the Universe. Tune in every Friday evening on BBC World Service, or catch up online at bbcworldservice.com/crowdscience

Much of what we find beautiful is highly subjective. However, experts who have interviewed large numbers of people and analysed some of the world’s most revered works of music, art and architecture have identified common attributes among the things we find beautiful. These universal qualities include simplicity, pattern, rhythm, symmetry, certain juxtapositions of colour, specific combinations of musical notes and physical elements arranged in certain ratios and geometries.

Neuroscientists also know a bit about what happens in our brains when we perceive beauty. In one study, volunteers inside a brain-imaging fMRI scanner were asked to rate pieces of visual art and music as either ‘beautiful’, ‘ugly’ or ‘indifferent’. When the participants experienced beautiful images or music, the researchers saw activity in a region of the brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex, which plays a role in our feelings of reward and pleasure. Other studies have identified that part of the region known as the striatum – also involved in reward and judgment – responds to beautiful faces.

But why do we experience beauty at all? Does it have a purpose? The leading theory is that we’re hardwired to appreciate forms and patterns that are pervasive in nature, such as fractals, the Golden Ratio and symmetry, because they helped our ancestors survive. A symmetrical face, for instance, suggests good health and strong genes in a potential mate. Our brains recognise plants that grow in fractal patterns as healthy and safe to eat, and make us wary of those that grow askew. Things that help us survive activate the reward centre in our brain, inducing feelings of pleasure and, in doing so, cause us to attach value to them. CP