Why Beautiful Things Make us Happy-Beauty Explained
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Why Beauty Make Us Happy
Fractal patterns for example. Occur all over nature. In snail shells, flowers' 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? Other pervasive things are 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. The asymmetrical 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 to activate the reward center in our brain, recognizing 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 remains 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 out the original artworks. This worked for painting 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.
Why Beauty Is Important
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 it. As we spread over the planet and our numbers grew, we shaped a man-made environment. In the process of doing so, we often neglected beauty in favor of functionality cost or efficiency. We built rows and row 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 raise to 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 visible 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 factors through observation and interviews with the patient 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 patient 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 factor 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 surrounding. 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.
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