Impact of contour on aesthetic judgments and approach-avoidance decisions in architecture

Abstract

On average, we urban dwellers spend about 90% of our time indoors, and share the intuition that the physical features of the places we live and work in influence how we feel and act. However, there is surprisingly little research on how architecture impacts behavior, much less on how it influences brain function. To begin closing this gap, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study to examine how systematic variation in contour impacts aesthetic judgments and approach-avoidance decisions, outcome measures of interest to both architects and users of spaces alike. As predicted, participants were more likely to judge spaces as beautiful if they were curvilinear than rectilinear. Neuroanatomically, when contemplating beauty, curvilinear contour activated the anterior cingulate cortex exclusively, a region strongly responsive to the reward properties and emotional salience of objects. Complementing this finding, pleasantness—the valence dimension of the affect circumplex—accounted for nearly 60% of the variance in beauty ratings. Furthermore, activation in a distributed brain network known to underlie the aesthetic evaluation of different types of visual stimuli covaried with beauty ratings. In contrast, contour did not affect approach-avoidance decisions, although curvilinear spaces activated the visual cortex. The results suggest that the well-established effect of contour on aesthetic preference can be extended to architecture. Furthermore, the combination of our behavioral and neural evidence underscores the role of emotion in our preference for curvilinear objects in this domain. 

neuroaesthetics | design | curvature | habitat theory

View Full Text:

https://www.pnas.org/content/110/Supplement_2/10446.full

LOCATION

a Department of Psychology, University of Toronto–Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada M1C 1A4; b Department of Psychology, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna, 38205 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain; c Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada M3J 1P3; d Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104; e Department of Architecture, Design, and Media Technology, University of Aalborg, DK - 9000 Aalborg, Denmark; f Faculty of Psychology and Cognitive Science Research Platform, University of Vienna, 1010 Vienna, Austria; g Department of Physiology, Universidad de La Laguna, La Laguna, 38071 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain; h The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design, and Conservation, School of Architecture, DK - 1435 Copenhagen, Denmark; i Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance, Copenhagen University Hospital Hvidovre, DK-2650 Copenhagen, Denmark; and j Decision Neuroscience Research Group, Department of Marketing, Copenhagen Business School, DK-2000 Copenhagen, Denmark; Edited by John C. Avise, University of California, Irvine, CA.

CLIENT

Public

YEAR

2013

STATUS

Approved April 23, 2013

PROGRAM

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TEAM LEADER

Oshin Vartanian, E-mail: oshinv1@mac.com

TEAM

Gorka Navarrete, Anjan Chatterjee, Lars Brorson Fich, Helmut Leder, Cristián Modroño, Marcos Nadal, Nicolai Rostrup, and Martin Skov

COLLABORATORS

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