2023/09/05 by Delaram Farzanfar, Dirk B. Walther · 1 voice · 1 citation
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Aesthetic Perception and Analysis #Color perception and design #Multisensory perception and integration
paper · doi:10.1177/09567976231190546
openalex publication_date 2023/09/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
To what extent do aesthetic experiences arise from the human ability to perceive and extract meaning from visual features? Ordinary scenes, such as a beach sunset, can elicit a sense of beauty in most observers. Although it appears that aesthetic responses can be shared among humans, little is known about the cognitive mechanisms that underlie this phenomenon. We developed a contour model of aesthetics that assigns values to visual properties in scenes, allowing us to predict aesthetic responses in adults from around the world. Through a series of experiments, we manipulate contours to increase or decrease aesthetic value while preserving scene semantic identity. Contour manipulations directly shift subjective aesthetic judgments. This provides the first experimental evidence for a causal relationship between contour properties and aesthetic valuation. Our findings support the notion that visual regularities underlie the human capacity to derive pleasure from visual information.