"Are Aesthetic Preferences in Visual Art Biological?"

Abstract of a paper by Lilia Villa

   Are aesthetic preferences in visual art biological? In the case of image composition: do right-handed people tend to like movement and subject matter geared towards one way and left-handed people tend to like the opposite?
    In my AP Art History class, we were looking at two art books. We noticed that in one book, a Rembrandt painting was facing one way, and the opposite way in the other. The teacher asked us which one we liked best, and to my amazement, everyone but two students liked the same image. Another student and I disagreed with the class. We both liked the image that faced the left. To my surprise, the student that agreed with me was left-handed like I was. This led me to believe that there might be a connection between brain lateralization and preference in image composition.
    In my research, I learned that the human brain is composed of two cerebral hemispheres. Paul Broca suggested that a person's handedness was opposite from the person's specialized hemisphere. So, left-handed people have right hemisphere specialization, and right-handed people have left hemisphere specialization.
    The question was: "does brain lateralization affect a person's preference in the image composition of visual art? To test this I decided to do a survey both online and in person. I built a web site at http://www.geocities.com/art_survey to help speed the process and make it more accessible and simple for survey takers. The survey was composed of 20 paintings that have clear tendencies to one side of the composition. Each painting was partnered with its mirror image, and the surveyed were asked to pick one of the flipped images that they preferred. Three were 25 right-handed people surveyed, and 25 left-handed people surveyed. Since only 1 out of 10 people is left handed, finding lefties to survey was the hardest part of the project. Mostly, people took the survey online, then e-mailed me the answers. This helped the process and made it faster and easier to reach participants and accumulate the results.
    The survey results showed that 4 out of 5 right-handed people surveyed had a tendency to prefer subject matter or movement towards the right of a composition. In contrast, 3 out of 5 left-handed people surveyed had a tendency to prefer subject matter or movement geared toward the left of a composition. The results of my research supported the hypothesis. Preferences in image composition of visual art have a connection to brain lateralization and handedness.

Senior Level, Second Place, Lilia Villa; Sweetwater High School, Grade 12. Advisor: Steven Jensen

Lilia Villa