The embodiment of beauty: Evidence from viewing Chinese concrete words and pictographs

Abstract

How is beauty embodied? According to the viewpoint of embodied cognition, the aesthetic processing of words or pictographs has roots in their referential archetypes. Four experiments tested whether the beauty of referential archetypes was routinely activated during the explicit and implicit aesthetic evaluations of the font structures of concrete Chinese words and pictographs in congruent or incongruent font colour. Results showed font structures of simplified Chinese words and pictographs were judged to be more beautiful when they referred to beautiful archetypes; and this pattern was reversed when they referred to ugly archetypes. Moreover, judgement was facilitated when font colour was congruent for Chinese words and pictographs referred to beautiful archetypes. For those referred to ugly archetypes, judgement was inhibited in congruent font colour but facilitated in incongruent font colour, suggesting aesthetic perceptions of the font structures of Chinese words and pictographs were derived from their referential natural objects. The spontaneous generation hypothesis of beauty is proposed to account for these findings.

Neural substrates of embodied natural beauty and social endowed beauty: An fMRI study

“…Although there has been progress in the neuroimaging of aesthetic appraisal, very little is known regarding the mental and neural mechanisms underlying these seemingly contradictory theories. Previous studies have found that ancient Chinese characters can arouse a sense of beauty due to their obvious two-dimensional graphical features 20 , 21 , supporting the use of ancient Chinese characters as materials for studies of aesthetic appraisal and judgments. More importantly, ancient Chinese characters were produced using two separate systems, one in which characters referring to concrete objects were generated by outlining the shape of the object (pictographs), and another in which characters referring to abstract social meaning were developed to convey corresponding social concepts (ideographic symbol of oracle bone scripts) 22 , 23 .…”

“…Pictographs are ancient Chinese characters that referred to concrete objects, which were adopted from the study by Zhang et al . 20 , 21 .

Figure 5 Experimental design, procedure and examples of stimuli.

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“…Following the logic of the studies examining aesthetic perception and appraisal of pictographs 20 , 21 , we asked the question of whether oracle bone scripts would elicit aesthetic appraisal dependent on their abstract social meanings. That is, would oracle bone scripts that refer to positive social meanings be more likely to be judged as beautiful, and those that refer to negative social meanings be more likely to be judged as ugly?…”