There are a variety of things that people find appealing, when we look at certain objects over others people will typically find one object more appealing than the other. Paintings, stars, landscapes, and forest can all be things that people find appealing. But why do people actually find certain things to be appealing?
For millions of years people have been fine tuned to notice things around us and to understand our environment. So we know what is safe to eat and what areas are safe for us to stay. Some examples would be a lush plant being more likely to be nutritious than a withering one. In this case the plant that is healthy is more likely to be symmetrical. This is one of the things that people can’t help but find visually appealing. There are many things that are made to be symmetric today even though the symmetry isn’t necessarily required, objects are made to be symmetric because that is something people like because of how it helped humanity survive in the past.
Fractal patterns are another thing that makes objects visually appealing. Fractal patterns are often found in paintings and other designs in objects. The reason for fractal patterns being visually appealing goes back to what people noticed when they were trying to survive. Noticing clouds in the sky would mean that it is going to rain soon and it would also help determine whether waters were safe to swim in, if the water seemed to be dangerous it wouldn’t really have a pattern.
Know that we know some of the reasons we find things visually appealing, we can take a look at whether our society today is based around it or not. When we look at neighborhoods houses usually have somewhat appealing shapes and people who take care of the plant life around there house or have a garden are normally seen as an extremely beautiful place. But these are homes that people have control over, when you take a look at industrial buildings it is normally not a pleasant sight. These buildings are usually dull to look at and can kind of change the mood we were in. This is because people are more frequently rating efficiency over visual appeal. This is fine and all, but a study actually shows that the less visually appealing are environment is, the less likely we are to feel happy. In fact less visually appealing environments are likely to make people feel depressed. So if visual appeal is something that makes people feel happy and more content with life, then I believe that we need to try to incorporate more visually appealing things in our life and maybe even rate visual appeal over efficiency.
Citations:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/201809/what-makes-something-beautiful
https://naldzgraphics.net/free-fractal-patterns-photoshop/
https://www.diygenius.com/fractals-in-nature/
How we see things 