title: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto-Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada. oshinv1@mac.com
authors.forename: Oshin
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Vartanian
authors.forename: Gorka
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Navarrete
authors.forename: Anjan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chatterjee
authors.forename: Lars Brorson
authors.initials: LB
authors.lastname: Fich
authors.forename: Helmut
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Leder
authors.forename: Cristián
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Modroño
authors.forename: Marcos
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nadal
authors.forename: Nicolai
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Rostrup
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Skov
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001504:Beauty; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006179:Gyrus Cinguli / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011859:Radiography; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology
keywords: curvature; design; habitat theory; neuroaesthetics