Attentional Bias to Beauty with Evolutionary Benefits: Evidence from Aesthetic Appraisal of Landscape Architecture

Wang

Environment and Behavior

et al. 2022

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The perception of beauty is known to be associated with the bodily sensations and evolutionary implications. However, whether the esthetic preference for natural landscape environments with different evolutionary benefits changes on the basis of different degrees of bodily sensations is still an open issue. The present study used four experiments to address this issue. The results showed that participants wearing a heavy backpack gave higher esthetic scores to and generate a strong attentional bias toward the green natural landscapes. Furthermore, the implicit association test (IAT) revealed that a green natural landscape was more readily associated with a high level of relaxation when the participants wore a backpack. The results indicated that the bodily sensation of a physical burden modulates the esthetic preference for natural environments when they consist of green plants, which are associated with a high level of relaxation and have significant evolutionary implications.

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

The Influence of Physical Burden on the Esthetic Preference for Green Natural Environment

Wang

Environment and Behavior

et al. 2022

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“…Moreover, Dance () further proposed that the processing of architecture and space is not only related to the processing of perception, but is also associated with emotional processing and experience. Previous behavioral empirical studies have also found that contact with the natural environment or green space in urban areas is in a sense good for the experience of human beings, in terms of stress reduction (Joye, ), greater vitality (Ryan et al, ), higher rewarding experience (Zhang, Tang, He, & Chen, ; Zhang, Tang, He, & Lai, ), an improvement in social performance (Zhang, Piff, Iyer, Koleva, & Keltner, ) and cognitive function (Atchley, Strayer, & Atchley, ; Bratman, Hamilton, & Daily, ). This evidence coincides with the framework of evolutionary psychology, which argues that the perception and appreciation of architectural environments or scenes with green space is associated with survival, reproduction, and environmental adaptations of humans (Killin, ; Seghers, ; Zhang, Tang, He, & Lai, ), and is linked to the enhancement of positive experience.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…A scene type judgment task (i.e., indicating whether the color photograph was a landscape garden or a natural landscape) was adopted to investigate the cortical differences between the perception and appreciation of natural landscapes (naturalness of landscapes) and landscape gardens (artificiality of landscapes). In addition, the lower definition versions of each original photograph of the landscape garden (LGL) and the natural landscape (NLL) were created and served as the baseline because they retained only the general colors and outlines of the original photographs, and could eliminate the effect of color preference (Vartanian & Goel, ; Wang, Mo, Vartanian, Cant, & Cupchik, ; Zhang, Tang, He, & Lai, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural correlates of appreciating natural landscape and landscape garden: Evidence from an fMRI study

Zhang

et al. 2019

Brain and Behavior

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Introduction Rambling natural landscapes or landscape gardens may invoke positive emotions. However, the manner in which people experience landscape gardens and the cortical differences in the appreciation of the naturalness and artificiality of landscapes remain unknown. Methods This study scanned participants with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they viewed photographs of natural landscapes and landscape gardens and performed scene type judgment task. Results As predicted, we identified brain regions that were associated with perceptual process, cognitive process, and rewarding experience when appreciating natural landscapes and landscape gardens without color preference. Meanwhile, the contrast between the appreciation of landscape gardens and natural landscapes was characterized by stronger activations of the inferior occipital lobe, the left superior parietal lobule (SPL), the right fusiform gyrus, the right cuneus, and the right hippocampus. Conclusions Responses in these regions indicate that the appreciation of landscape gardens and natural landscapes relies on common cortical regions, and suggest the possibility that the inferior occipital lobe, the SPL, the fusiform gyrus, and the cuneus may be specifically associated with the appreciation of landscape gardens.

Empirical Studies of the Arts

“…Furthermore, a few recent evolutionary esthetics studies have found evidence specifically of a positive association between adaptive visual attention prioritization and esthetic preference for natural stimuli. One study showed that natural landscape architecture elicits a sense of beauty and captured visual attention more easily than other types of architecture (Zhang, Tang, He, & Lai, 2018). Other studies revealed that the most feared snake species also tend to be perceived as beautiful, largely independent of cultural background (Landová et al, 2018).…”

Section: Does Animacy Matter For Experts?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Prestige and Animacy Matter to Art Experts? Exploring Social Learning, Signaling, Perceptual, and Cognitive Explanations

Verpooten

Delcourt

Dewitte

2023

Art experts generally perceive, process, and appreciate artworks differently from non-experts. Here we explored whether animacy of the content and prestige of the context of artworks matter to experts. Results (n > 1,000) suggest that experts are indeed swayed by prestige cues when appreciating artworks. Furthermore, the higher their expertise, the less animacy matters, to the point even of a reversal among the highest echelons. There experts prefer inanimate (e.g., furniture) to animate stimuli. We consider several, mostly complementary explanations. One interpretation is that experts might have learned through prestige bias to reduce their preference for animacy, which would be consistent with a prestige bias runaway process. Other interpretations include processing perceptual (dis)fluency, cognitive mastering, and identity signaling. Irrespective of the precise roles of these compatible processes, the results might point to a more general expertise-dependent pattern. We close by discussing further research opportunities to further fine-tune possible explanations.