Evidence that the aesthetic preference for Hogarth's Line of Beauty is an evolutionary by-product
Identifikátory výsledku
Kód výsledku v IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11310%2F23%3A10480022" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11310/23:10480022 - isvavai.cz</a>
Výsledek na webu
<a href="https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=uR5Jb2.WrE" target="_blank" >https://verso.is.cuni.cz/pub/verso.fpl?fname=obd_publikace_handle&handle=uR5Jb2.WrE</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-31175-w" target="_blank" >10.1038/s41598-023-31175-w</a>
Alternativní jazyky
Jazyk výsledku
angličtina
Název v původním jazyce
Evidence that the aesthetic preference for Hogarth's Line of Beauty is an evolutionary by-product
Popis výsledku v původním jazyce
In 1753, artist William Hogarth declared a specific S-shaped line to be the 'Line of Beauty' (LoB). Hogarth's assertion has had a profound impact on diverse fields over the past two and a half centuries. However, only one recent (2022) study has investigated whether Hogarth's assertion accurately captures humans' actual aesthetic preferences, and no research has explored why people find the LoB beautiful. We conducted two studies testing the hypothesis that the LoB's perceived beauty is an incidental by-product of cognitive systems that evolved to attend to fitness-relevant morphological features in people. In Study 1, we replicated the finding that female bodies whose lumbar curvature approximates the biomechanical optimum for dealing with the exigencies of pregnancy are rated as more attractive. In Study 2, we found that abstract lines extracted from these bodies were perceived as more beautiful than other lines. These results suggest that the preference for Hogarth's LoB is an incidental by-product of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other purposes. More broadly, these findings suggest that an evolutionary psychological approach - in particular the concept of evolutionary by-product - may be useful for understanding, explaining, and predicting people's aesthetic preferences for certain abstract symbols, which otherwise might seem arbitrary and inexplicable.
Název v anglickém jazyce
Evidence that the aesthetic preference for Hogarth's Line of Beauty is an evolutionary by-product
Popis výsledku anglicky
In 1753, artist William Hogarth declared a specific S-shaped line to be the 'Line of Beauty' (LoB). Hogarth's assertion has had a profound impact on diverse fields over the past two and a half centuries. However, only one recent (2022) study has investigated whether Hogarth's assertion accurately captures humans' actual aesthetic preferences, and no research has explored why people find the LoB beautiful. We conducted two studies testing the hypothesis that the LoB's perceived beauty is an incidental by-product of cognitive systems that evolved to attend to fitness-relevant morphological features in people. In Study 1, we replicated the finding that female bodies whose lumbar curvature approximates the biomechanical optimum for dealing with the exigencies of pregnancy are rated as more attractive. In Study 2, we found that abstract lines extracted from these bodies were perceived as more beautiful than other lines. These results suggest that the preference for Hogarth's LoB is an incidental by-product of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other purposes. More broadly, these findings suggest that an evolutionary psychological approach - in particular the concept of evolutionary by-product - may be useful for understanding, explaining, and predicting people's aesthetic preferences for certain abstract symbols, which otherwise might seem arbitrary and inexplicable.
Klasifikace
Druh
J<sub>imp</sub> - Článek v periodiku v databázi Web of Science
CEP obor
—
OECD FORD obor
10602 - Biology (theoretical, mathematical, thermal, cryobiology, biological rhythm), Evolutionary biology
Návaznosti výsledku
Projekt
—
Návaznosti
I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace
Ostatní
Rok uplatnění
2023
Kód důvěrnosti údajů
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Údaje specifické pro druh výsledku
Název periodika
Scientific Reports
ISSN
2045-2322
e-ISSN
2045-2322
Svazek periodika
13
Číslo periodika v rámci svazku
1
Stát vydavatele periodika
GB - Spojené království Velké Británie a Severního Irska
Počet stran výsledku
9
Strana od-do
4134
Kód UT WoS článku
000988825800043
EID výsledku v databázi Scopus
2-s2.0-85150090956