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