A lot of things can be beautiful. Landscapes, faces, fine art, or epic architecture; stars in the sky. Or simply the reflection of the sun on an empty bottle. Beauty is nothing tangible, it only exists in our heads as a pleasant feeling. If we have to define it, we perceive something as beautiful if its color, shape, form, or proportion somehow are appealing or delightful to us. Beauty is a very human experience that's been with us for millions of years. Even our first tools were trimmed to a symmetrical shape. Researchers have tried to find practical reasons why our ancestors invested the time to make their tools look nice, but couldn't really identify any. It seems that early humans shaped their tools into teardrops, simply because they liked them better that way. Throughout our history, the definition of beauty has changed a lot. Ideals have shifted or turned into their opposites. But beyond individual and contemporary tastes some things have never really gone out of fashion. The golden ratio, symmetry, or fractal patterns can be found in the art and architecture of cultures from our beginnings, to today. Humans seem to be in mysterious, inherent agreement about the beauty of certain things. The patterns that keep coming up are all rooted in nature. They became part of our biology because they helped our ancestors survive. Fractal patterns for example, occur all over nature. In snail shells, flower heads; waves or clouds Identifying and assessing these things and phenomena correctly used to be vital. Do those clouds mean rain will come soon? Are these waters safe to swim through? Can I eat this? Another pervasive thing is symmetry. In nature it means everything is as it should be Stems and trees and leaves and blossoms all grow symmetrically A deer with impressive antlers is probably a source of nutritious meat. A deformed wheat hair may not be safe to eat. A symmetrical face is more likely to belong to a healthy and fertile mating partner. Because symmetry is so common in fauna and flora, it's extremely familiar to our brain. It helped our ancestors evaluate their environment more easily, and react quickly to danger. Things that helped us survive activate the reward center in our brain. recognising signals of safety and nutrition, triggered nice feelings in us. So our sense of beauty probably evolved from pattern recognition, but it goes way beyond that now. Humans seem to have evolved an instinct for beauty that is deeply hardwired into us. It remain even after other processes in our brain stop working. Alzheimer's patients were asked to rank the beauty of several paintings Then the experiment was repeated two weeks later The patients have long since forgotten the paintings, but still ranked the beauty of the paintings in the same order. One could argue that this doesn't say much. So what if people stick to their personal preferences? But other research has shown that we have a sort of lowest common denominator when it comes to beauty. In different experiments, people were asked to distinguish real from fake abstract paintings. Some were originals by Mondrian and Pollock that were painted based on strict rules like fractal patterns, while the imitations were not. The majority picked out the original artworks. This worked for paintings from both artists, even though their arts are very different. Another experiment also used abstract artworks but, asked people to pick them out among similar paintings made either by children or animals. Again, the test subjects pointed out the legit paintings whose patterns were carefully planned and not random So while we have a hard time pinning down what beauty is or what it's based on, we somehow recognize it when we see it Humans don't navigate nature trying to survive day by day anymore We left the natural world behind and created our own. We made the objects that surround us the things we wear and use and look at. As we spread over the planet and our numbers grew, we shaped a completely man-made environment. In the process of doing so, we often neglected beauty in favor of functionality cost or efficiency. We built rows and rows of concrete housing blocks that nobody wants to live in. We have ugly underground subway stations, shabby public service buildings, and sprawling malls. One bland, standardized box beside the next. Humans, don't like monotony. Eye tracking software has shown that people keep focusing on details and ornaments of architecture while brushing quickly over blank walls And not only are they no fun to look at, they actually make us miserable. Experiments with skin sensors showed that looking at vast, dull facades makes us feel bored and uncomfortable. This kind of boredom has been linked to raised heart rates and stress levels and the opposite seems to be true, too. Over the last decades more and more studies have found that surroundings that are actually aesthetically pleasing to us can improve our well-being, our behavior, cognitive function, and mood. Our bodies and brains react measurably and visibly to everything that surrounds us Beauty in particular has such a strong impact on our well-being that making useful things beautiful can actually make them better. In 2017, a hospital examined recovery factors through observation and interviews with patients and found that visual art in their lounge areas made them more comfortable and happier about their stay in general. Another study looked at how well patients recovered in a hospital that had two wards. A very old and rather ugly one, and a newly renovated ward. To the researchers' surprise, the patients that stayed in the new, renovated environment, needed less pain medication and were released on average, two days earlier than patients recovering in the old ward. More beautiful surroundings made them feel better, physically. Beauty also has an effect on us on a daily basis. It can improve our general happiness. A study that looked at the main factors influencing the happiness of adults revealed an unexpected result. Besides things like good health in a harmonious family life, individual happiness is affected by how beautiful you find the city you live in. Beauty scored even higher than cleanliness or safety. So what can we learn from all of this? We know that we humans have been fine-tuned for millions of years to process visual input and assess our surroundings. It's just what we're programmed to do and we're starting to learn more about how much beauty as a property is really influencing us. Beauty meets an inherent need for meaningful information. Maybe it would be worth giving it more space in this man-made world we have created. This video was a collaboration with the creative agencies, Sagmeister and Walsh as a contribution to their upcoming beauty exhibition. The exhibition will be shown at the Mak Vienna from Oct. 23, 2018 - Mar. 31, 2019 and a Mak Frankfurt from May 01, 2019 - Sept. 30, 2019 If you want to learn more about the impact of beauty and see tons of gorgeous installations and multimedia objects, go check it out! review: Doğa Poyraz Tahan
I stumbled upon a misguided reference for this video.
In the reference list, Kurzgesagt provides this description:
However the first link provided under it (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0020764017744582) suggests the correlation between aesthetics and depression is inconsistent:
(emphasis mine)
I do generally agree with their conclusions otherwise, and I'm a fan of Kurzgesagt, of course.
The study that they did in the hospitals - I wonder if they would yield similar results from beautifying the insides of public schools (higher grades, better graduation rates). Almost all public schools I've been to look and feel like prisons inside. I know it's because they're supposed to be bomb shelters but I'm sure there's a way to make them look much nicer than they currently do.
Basically our ancestors evolved to be really good at recognizing patterns in their environment that were vital to their survival and now our brains are all hard-wired to have a part-subjective, part-objective appreciation for these naturally occurring patterns, so much so that we use them in our man-made environment and absence or presence of those patterns in our day-to-day lives can affect our mood, happiness, and health in a statistically significant way.
I've always liked the explanation drawn from this beautifully made short film on why we may find a certain landscape beautiful. To search for new lands and new promises.
I wonder if other animals also have their own idea of beauty, like maybe cats may prefer to stay with one human owner over another because that person is "better looking" or something.
It's probably hard to actually test though, considering we cannot ask them to just point to beautiful things.
I can say for sure the animation is beautiful, kept my attention for that whole video.
I think this video illustrates pretty well how Kurzgesagt fails to actually answer the question he starts with in any meaningful way. The question is "Why do beautiful things make us happy?" His answer is essentially to assert "Beautiful things do in fact make us happy". He stops well short of explaining what beauty is, let alone why beautiful things make us happy.
Let's go over some of his arguments.
The symmetry in nature argument is pretty decent. It does help to know that asymmetrical plants are more likely to kill you. But of course you can think of a thousand counter examples without even trying. Tigers are incredibly beautiful. Spider webs, and spiders themselves, are profoundly symmetrical. Every snake wears an intricately patterned coat of scales. All three of these things can kill you. And of course, everyone who has ever gardened knows that delicious fruits and vegetables are very often misshaped and odd looking.
The Mondrian / Pollock study was very interesting. So was the Alzheimers study. Both illustrate that humans have a deep understanding of beauty, and some of our deepest sense of beauty is shared by all of us. That's pretty great. But this is just an observation that humans have a common understanding of beauty, not an explanation of what beauty is or why we appreciate it.
The golden ratio argument is, as always, way overblown. For instance, he uses the Eiffel Tower as an example of the Golden Ratio. The Eiffel Tower is actually 984 feet tall and 328 feet wide at the base, nowhere remotely close to the golden ratio. This is obviously an oversight, but ironically it illustrates that the golden ratio is in no way an essential aspect of beauty. It is incredibly easy to think of beautiful things that have no obvious golden ratio present.
Beautiful things are not always symmetric or fractal or golden, and the reverse is also true. At 4:25 "...We often neglected beauty in favor of functionality, cost, or efficiency. We built rows and rows of concrete housing blocks that nobody wants to live in."
Notice that the concrete housing blocks exhibit every sign of beauty and symmetry that he talked about earlier in the video! These "ugly" houses are symmetrical and exhibit fractal patterns, and some are even in the golden ratio. Once again, strictly mathematical explanations of beauty fall well short of explaining what beauty is. I don't disagree that rows of concrete houses are ugly, but this shows how feeble the beauty = symmetry argument really is.
The example later in the video that links looking at dull facades to boredom, and boredom to increased stress, and stress to heart attacks, is really precarious on its face. As u/MadFlorist pointed out, the studies linking aesthetics to mood are quite weak as well. This isn't to say that beauty is unimportant! I try to surround myself with beautiful things. I notice that I feel better when my surroundings are well organized and clean. I completely support putting more art in hospitals, schools, and public places.
The reason that this frustrates me so much is that I think beauty deserves more careful attention. The questions of what beauty is, why we value it, and how to present it, are all ancient questions. Throwing a couple hand-wavy arguments and flimsy studies at the issue just seems like a perfectly horrible 21st century gloss of explanation without any real wisdom.
Video is 7 minutes. I like how you posted it in less than 5 minutes from upload.
Edit :After watching ,I am glad that my mother made me have a plant in my room.
I am usually skeptical of these kind of reports. I mean, for instance the part they mention about identifying real modern art versus fake stuff; there are studies which also have gone the other way.
The problem here is that this oversimplifies things and doesn't really take into account the strength of the studies.
I mean at the end of the day, there's good research and there's bad research and the findings are only valid as the study design.