Visual and Auditory Aesthetic Preferences Across Cultures

TL;DR

This large-scale cross-cultural study investigates aesthetic preferences across shape, colour, and music, revealing both universal patterns and cultural differences, highlighting the interplay of shared perception and cultural learning.

Contribution

The paper provides the first extensive cross-cultural analysis of aesthetic preferences across multiple modalities, revealing universal and culturally specific patterns.

Findings

Symmetrical shape and curvature preferences are consistent across cultures.

Colour preferences are categorically similar, but ratio preferences vary.

Musical harmony shows agreement in interval relationships despite regional differences.

Abstract

Research on how humans perceive aesthetics in shapes, colours, and music has predominantly focused on Western populations, limiting our understanding of how cultural environments shape aesthetic preferences. We present a large-scale cross-cultural study examining aesthetic preferences across five distinct modalities extensively explored in the literature: shape, curvature, colour, musical harmony and melody. We gather 401,403 preference judgements from 4,835 participants across 10 countries, systematically sampling two-dimensional parameter spaces for each modality. The findings reveal both universal patterns and cultural variations. Preferences for shape and curvature cross-culturally demonstrate a consistent preference for symmetrical forms. While colour preferences are categorically consistent, ratio-like preferences vary across cultures. Musical harmony shows strong agreement in interval relationships despite differing regions of preference within the broad frequency spectrum, while melody shows the highest cross-cultural variation. These results suggest that aesthetic preferences emerge from an interplay between shared perceptual mechanisms and cultural learning.