Among the visual preferences that guide many everyday activities and decisions, from consumer choices to social judgment, preference for curved over sharp-angled contours is commonly thought to have played an adaptive role throughout human evolution, favoring the avoidance of potentially harmful objects. However, because nonhuman primates also exhibit preferences for certain visual qualities, it is conceivable that humans’ preference for curved contours is grounded on perceptual and cognitive mechanisms shared with extant nonhuman primate species. Here we aimed to determine whether nonhuman great apes and humans share a visual preference for curved over sharp-angled contours using a 2-alternative forced choice experimental paradigm under comparable conditions. Our results revealed that the human group and the great ape group indeed share a common preference for curved over sharp-angled contours, but that they differ in the manner and magnitude with which this preference is expressed behaviorally. These results suggest that humans’ visual preference for curved objects evolved from earlier primate species’ visual preferences, and that during this process it became stronger, but also more susceptible to the influence of higher cognitive processes and preference for other visual features.

Improvements in neuroimaging methods have afforded significant advances in our knowledge of the cognitive and neural foundations of aesthetic appreciation. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to register brain activity during an aesthetic appreciation task. The data were analyzed with Event-Related Field (ERF) and Time-Frequency (TF) procedures. ERFs revealed no significant differences between brain activity related with stimuli rated as “beautiful” and “not-beautiful”. TF analysis showed clear differences between both conditions 400 ms after stimulus onset. In the four frequency bands (theta, alpha, beta and gamma) oscillatory power was significantly greater for stimuli rated as “beautiful” than those regarded as “not-beautiful”. These results are interpreted in the frame of synchronization studies.

It is well established that aesthetic appreciation is related with activity in several different brain regions. The identification of the neural correlates of beauty or liking ratings has been the focus of most prior studies. Not much attention has been directed towards the fact that humans are surrounded by objects that lead them to experience aesthetic indifference or leave them with a negative aesthetic impression. Here we explore the neural substrate of such experiences. Given the neuroimaging techniques that have been used, little is known about the temporal features of such brain activity. By means of magnetoencephalography we registered the moment at which brain activity differed while participants viewed images they considered to be beautiful or not. Results show that the first differential activity appears between 300 and 400 ms after stimulus onset. During this period activity in right lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) was greater while participants rated visual stimuli as not beautiful than when they rated them as beautiful. We argue that this activity is associated with an initial negative aesthetic impression formation, driven by the relative hedonic value of stimuli regarded as not beautiful. Additionally, our results contribute to the understanding of the nature of the functional roles of the lOFC.

People infer the taste of products based on semantic knowledge (e.g., associations with the category and brand elements). They also link shape features with certain taste qualities through inherent associations commonly referred to as crossmodal correspondences. This research examined how shape features influence the evaluation of familiar and unfamiliar products, and thus varying levels of semantic knowledge. Participants evaluated the expected taste, familiarity, liking, and willingness to purchase products with curved and angular logos presented with sweet, bitter, and neutral characteristics, as well as unfamiliar products. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that the curved logos were preferred and associated with greater sweetness, while the angular logos were less preferred and associated with bitterness. However, in Experiment 2, these differences disappeared when the logos were presented with packages of familiar (sweet, bitter, and neutral) and unfamiliar products. In Experiment 3, the expected tastes for the logos were more pronounced when they were framed as representing new or unfamiliar products than sweet and bitter familiar products. The difference in expected sweetness between curved and angular logos was greater for new or unfamiliar products than for familiar sweet products, and the same pattern was found for expected bitterness. Together, these results suggest that feature-based expectations of taste are absent or less pronounced when semantic knowledge about the products is greater.