title: The small step toward asymmetry: Aesthetic judgment of broken symmetries.
abstract: Symmetry and complexity both affect the aesthetic judgment of abstract patterns. However, although beauty tends to be associated with symmetry, there are indications that small asymmetries can also be beautiful. We investigated the influence of small deviations from symmetry on people's aesthetic liking for abstract patterns. Breaking symmetry not only decreased patterns' symmetry but also increased their complexity. While an increase of complexity normally results in a higher liking, we found that even a small decrease of symmetry has a strong effect, such that patterns with slightly broken symmetries were significantly less liked than fully symmetric ones.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Basic Research and Research Methods, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; e-mail: andreas.gartus@univie.ac.at.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gartus
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Basic Research and Research Methods, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; e-mail: helmut.leder@univie.ac.at.
authors.forename: Helmut
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Leder
keywords: aesthetics; asymmetry; broken symmetry; complexity; liking; symmetry