Why Beautiful Things Makes us Happy?

A lot of things can be perceived as beautiful. Landscapes, artwork, stars in the sky, or simply the reflection of the moon in a river. Beauty is nothing tangible, it only exist in our minds as a pleasant feeling. If we have to define it, we perceive something as beautiful if its color, shape, and form are somehow appealing to us.

Beauty is a human experience that has been with us since the beginning of humanity. Even our first rock tools were made to a symmetrical shape. Throughout history, the definition of beauty has changed a lot. But beyond individual and temporary tastes some things have never really gone out of fashion. The golden ratio, symmetrical shape, and fractal patterns can be found in the artwork and architecture from ancient cultures to today.

Why Beauty Makes us Happy?

Fractal patterns for example, occur all over nature. In snail shells, waves,or even clouds. Recognizing and assessing these things used to be vital. Do those clouds mean there will be a storm? Are these waters save to swim through?

Another pervasive things is Symmetry. In nature it means everything is the way it should be. Stems and trees and leaves and blossoms all grow symmetrically. A deers with magnificent antlers is probably a source of nutritious meat. A stinky apple may not be safe to eat.

Because symmetry is so common in flora and fauna, it is extremely familiar to our brain. It helped our ancestors knowing their terrain easier, and react quickly to danger. So our sense of beauty most likely evolved from pattern recognition, but it goes way beyond that now. Humans seem to have evolved an instinct to beauty that is deeply hardwired to us.

Alzheimer’s patients were asked to rank the beauty of a few paintings. Then the experiments were repeated a few weeks later. The patients have long since forgotten the paintings. People could argue that this does not mean much. So what if people stick to their personal opinnion?

But other research has shown that we have some kind of common determinator when it comes to beauty. In other experiments, people were asked to differentiate real from fake abstract paintings. Some were originals by Mondarian that were painted based on rules like fractal patterns, while the imitations were not. The majority of people picked out the original artworks. So, while we have a hard time defining what beauty is, we somehow recognize it when we see it.

Why Beauty is Important?

Humans do not navigate nature trying to survive every day anymore. We left the natural world and created our own. As we migrated all over the planet and our populations grew, we made a compeletely man-made environment. In the process of doing so, we often sacrificed beauty in favor of flexibility, cost, and efficiency. We built rows of concrete residential blocks that no one wants to live in. We have crappy subway stations, shabby public service buildings and sprawling malls. And not only they are horrible 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 stress levels and heart rates. Over the decades, more and more studies have found that surroundings that are actually look pleasing to us can improve our happiness, behaviour, cognitive function, and mood.

In 2017, a hospital studied 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 ugly one, and a newly renovated wards. The results caught researchers’ by surprise, the patients that stayed in the new, renovated wards, needed less pain medication and were released on average two days earlier than patients recovering in the old and ugly ward.

Beauty also have an effect on us on our everyday life. It can improve our general happiness. Besides things like good health, harmonious family, and stable financial, individual happines is affected by how beautiful you find the city you live in.

Conclusion

We know that we humans have been fine tuned for millions if years to process visual input and assess our surroundings. It is just what we are programmed to do and we are starting to learn further about how important beauty as a property is really impacting us. Perhaps it would be worth giving it more space in this man-made world we have created.