The dark side of symmetry

Do we really always like symmetry? One might think so: it is orderly, regular, reassuring. And indeed, in many cases, that is true. But when we move from abstract shapes to images of the real world, things become more complicated.

In a recent study, we investigated how symmetry influences aesthetic judgment across different types of images, including abstract shapes, flowers, faces, and landscapes. The main result is clear: symmetry does not have a universal effect. While it tends to increase aesthetic appreciation for abstract shapes, in landscapes it can even have the opposite effect. In other words, a landscape that is made artificially more symmetrical is not necessarily perceived as more beautiful - on the contrary, it may appear less natural and therefore less pleasant.

This suggests that our aesthetic experience arises from the interaction of multiple factors: not only visual order and regularity, but also naturalness, familiarity, and expectations about how the world around us should look.

An especially interesting finding is that symmetry still seems to retain a kind of underlying appeal. Even when people explicitly report preferring less symmetrical images, at a more automatic level symmetry remains associated with something positive.

In short, symmetry matters, but by itself it is not enough to make something beautiful. And above all, it does not work in the same way in every case: it depends on what we are looking at.

Roccato, M., Contemori, G., Campana, G., & Bertamini, M. (2024). Explicit and Implicit Preference for Symmetry Across Object Categories. Symmetry, 16(11), 1478
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/16/11/1478