Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel bomb here. Think of a pair of synchronized divers,
Speaker 1: or the wings on a butterfly, or the vaulted ceiling
Speaker 1: of a cathedral. These are some of the things that
Speaker 1: most people find visually very pleasing. But why. The answer
Speaker 1: has to do with symmetry. Most objects in the real
Speaker 1: world are symmetrical. This is particularly true of nature, the
Speaker 1: radial symmetry of a starfish or flower petals, the symmetrical
Speaker 1: efficiency of a hexagonal honeycomb, or the uniquely symmetrical crystal
Speaker 1: patterns of a snowflake. In fact, asymmetry is often a
Speaker 1: sign of illness or danger in the natural world, and
Speaker 1: of course, human beings are symmetrical, at least mostly and
Speaker 1: on the outside. You know, some internal organs like the
Speaker 1: heart and liver are off center. Decades of research into
Speaker 1: sexual attraction have proven that both men and women find
Speaker 1: symmetrical faces sexier than asymmetrical ones. The leading explanation is
Speaker 1: the physical symmetry is an outward sign of good health,
Speaker 1: although large scale studies have shown no significant health differences
Speaker 1: in people with symmetrical or asymmetrical faces. Since severe physical
Speaker 1: asymmetries are strong indicators of genetic disorders. Our brains might
Speaker 1: just be overreacting. The simple explanation for our attraction to
Speaker 1: symmetry is that it's familiar symmetrical objects and images played
Speaker 1: by the rules that our brains are programmed to recognize easily.
Speaker 1: Physicist Alan Lightman wrote about this in his book The
Speaker 1: Accidental Universe The World You Thought You Knew. He wrote,
Speaker 1: I would claim that symmetry represents order, and we crave
Speaker 1: order in this strange universe. We find ourselves in the
Speaker 1: search for symmetry, and the emotional pleasure we derive when
Speaker 1: we find it must help us make sense of the
Speaker 1: world around us, just as we find satisfaction in the
Speaker 1: repetition of the seasons and in the reliability of friendships.
Speaker 1: Symmetry is also economy. Symmetry is simplicity, Symmetry is elegance.
Speaker 1: At the esoteric end of the explanation spectrum, Lightment is
Speaker 1: saying that the satisfaction we feel at seeing a creatively
Speaker 1: symmetrical work of art or a perfectly stacked display of
Speaker 1: soup cans at the grocery store is that the stuff
Speaker 1: of our brains is inseparable from the stuff of nature.
Speaker 1: The neurons and synapses in our brains and the processes
Speaker 1: by which they communicate, connect, and conjure thoughts evolved in
Speaker 1: parallel to snowflakes and starfish. If nature is symmetrical, then
Speaker 1: so are our minds. On the more basic end, the
Speaker 1: pleasure we get from symmetry could simply be due to
Speaker 1: our minds need to find patterns and attempt to make
Speaker 1: sense of things, especially quickly and with a limited data set.
Speaker 1: Considered the Stalt psychology, named after an influential school of
Speaker 1: visual perception born in Germany in the nineteen twenties. The
Speaker 1: famous and famously mistranslated gives Stalt motto is the whole
Speaker 1: is other than the sum of its parts, not the
Speaker 1: whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Our
Speaker 1: brain is more than a calculator adding up the details
Speaker 1: of a scene. It's primed to recognize signs of order
Speaker 1: in the accidental chaos and to follow certain rules or
Speaker 1: shortcuts to make sense of the world. Symmetry is one
Speaker 1: of those short cuts. We spoke with Mary Peterson, a
Speaker 1: psychology professor and director of the Visual Perception Laboratory at
Speaker 1: the University of Arizona. As she says, the brain doesn't
Speaker 1: like things that are accidental. We either learn or born
Speaker 1: with certain priors or shortcuts that help our brains quickly
Speaker 1: determined that we're looking at one particular object or another.
Speaker 1: We also spoke with Johann vachu Launch, an experimental psychologist
Speaker 1: from Belgium who specializes in visual perception and how our
Speaker 1: brains organized the constant incoming flow of information. He agrees
Speaker 1: as symmetry is not just a design principle of the
Speaker 1: outside world. He said, you can also see symmetry as
Speaker 1: one of these major principles driving the self organization of
Speaker 1: the brain. All these tendencies toward good organization and simple
Speaker 1: organization are also principles of symmetry in the dynamics of
Speaker 1: the brain itself. But on the other hand, too much
Speaker 1: symmetry can be a tad boring. While perfectly symmetrical designs
Speaker 1: are more pleasing to the brain, they're not necessarily more beautiful.
Speaker 1: Both art novices and experts prefer art that strikes, says
Speaker 1: vocumons an optimal level of stimulation, not too complex, not
Speaker 1: too simple, not too chaotic, and not too orderly. Indeed,
Speaker 1: the Japanese have an esthetic principle called quinsey, which is
Speaker 1: all about creating balance in a composition using asymmetry or irregularity.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Dave Rouse and produced by
Speaker 1: Tristan McNeil. For more on this and tons of other
Speaker 1: brainy topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com.