Those who deal with design should understand how much cognition and emotion band together within the aesthetic experience.
Everyone agrees that the ideal “formula” for the development of an interface project requires balanced amounts of knowledge and aesthetics. Along with elements such as information architecture, usability, navigation performance and substantial content – highly important for such projects, we are aware that aesthetics – the graphic treatment – plays a role of utmost significance.
Evolutionary biology tells us that the “ideals of beauty” have been somehow programmed into our gene pools
In fact, the issue concerning what is beautiful or what is not so directly influences many aspects of our lives. In his book “O que é belo?” (”What is beautiful?”, free translation of title), Gábor Paál attempts to situate the concept within the realm of aesthetics and knowledge.
While philosophers associate it mainly to art and psychologists see it as a sheer sensation of pleasure, to the layman aesthetics is simply a matter of taste.
Evolutionary biology tells us that the “ideals of beauty”, because of the selective advantage they provide, have been somehow programmed into our gene pools. It is a proven fact that people find waterscapes and places of lush green vegetation more pleasing than deserts and steep mountains. To our ancestors, living in those areas gave them an advantage because food and water were easier to obtain, and they also found better protection against their enemies.
On its turn, experimental psychology also gave rise to the so-called field of informational aesthetics. Researchers have demonstrated that graphic patterns are responsible for stimulating the observer’s investigative potential, that is, they are able to spark curiosity.
Balance seems to be the key word when it comes to aesthetics. Too plain a picture is dull; a very complex one displays a confusing mass that does not draw any interest. The pictures considered by most people as being more appealing possess the exact level of complexity capable of generating, in the sensory apparatus, structures of a higher order, also called “supersigns”.
In other words, a pattern endowed with beauty features an optimal degree of informational density.
Alexander Baumgarten, founder of modern aesthetics, once defined the aesthetic experience as a “sensitive” form of knowledge – opposed to the “rational-conceptual” kind. To him, beauty meant the opposite of reason.
However, Nelson Goodman, American philosopher, in his book Languages of Art, condemned such strict detachment between the cognitive and emotional spheres stating that: “We place, on one side, impressions from the senses, perceptions, inferences, hypotheses, facts and truth; on the other, pleasure, pain, interest, satisfaction, emotional responses, sympathy and aversion. By so doing, we become unable to realize that emotions operate cognitively in the aesthetic experience”. (Free back-translation).
Considering cognition and emotion are so integrated, it makes no sense trying to set them apart in the aesthetic experience. What we find beautiful is not always rational, although pure rationality can be very beautiful at times. One thing is certain, though: efficiency and elegance are intimately connected.
Nevertheless, despite this link between emotion and cognition, there is a significant difference: while joy and contentment are hazy feelings, occurring on subconscious levels, of a spontaneous and visceral nature, the aesthetic experience is somewhat more conscious.
Most times, we are able to identify very clearly the object we consider beautiful, something we have a harder time doing regarding the sensation of well-being, which is perceived in a diffuse way.
All that makes it even harder to answer the question about the meaning of beauty.
However, let’s give it a try. Let’s think about an aesthetic object of any kind – an interface, a sculpture, a scientific theory, a landscape – simply as a model formed by interconnected individual elements.
The question is: how should this model be disposed, how should we perceive it in order to find it beautiful?
Through that procedure, practically every phenomenon of aesthetic experience described by experimental psychology fits one of four categories:
1. Beauty of the first kind. Derives from the relationships between the elements within a model. Those characteristics are coherence, symmetry, balance, clearness, simplicity, harmony, elegance, unity, continuity and – perhaps the most important – suitability. They describe a certain kind of order inside a model.
2. Beauty of the second kind. Refers less to an object and more to a personal relationship between object and beholder. In other words, connection, familiarity, trust, empathy, or the possibility of personally taking part in something. Thoughts and objects acquire aesthetic value when they touch us on a personal level, move us, when they reflect something of ourselves, when we identify with them in one way or another, or project our thoughts and emotions unto them.
Beauty of the second kind is the essence of phenomena as diverse as sympathy, the feeling of belonging to a certain place and also our favoritism towards theories and ideas that agree with our view of the world. Besides, it is not merely the familiarity that ascribes aesthetic value, but a particular blend of the usual and the new.
3. Beauty of the third kind. The criteria of beauty are stimulus, excitement, novelty, complexity, but also creativity. It is beautiful to feel creative. Beauty does not report only to objects, but also to actions. It can be beautiful to discover new things, make art, write books, or express one’s own ideas. The beauty in those actions does not depend so much on whether the object produced is beautiful: the most important issue is that dealing with the object has been a stimulating experience.
4. Fundamental Aesthetics. This is the category which best corresponds to the notions of beauty as a sensory experience and sensation of pleasure. Our predilection for harmonious sounds, waterscapes, symmetrical faces or well-built bodies falls into this category. The main characteristic of the fundamental aesthetics theories is that objects do not carry any additional symbolic trait. A rose, in that respect, is simply a rose, not a sign of affection, or a romantic symbol, nor a metaphor of bloom and decay.
The four categories above help us describe aesthetic sensations in all their diversity and, at the same time they provide us with a terminology for values of beauty, they also leave room for individual preferences.
Such classification system of aesthetic values is also useful for all those dealing with knowledge production and distribution. Designers, artists, journalists, advertisers, education administrators or scientists can and should consider the fundamental aesthetic values, be it mindfully or intuitively.
