What flowers do we like? The influence of shape and color on the rating of flower beauty

Abstract

There is no doubt that people find flowers beautiful. Surprisingly, we know very little about the actual properties which make flowers so appealing to humans. Although the evolutionary aesthetics provides some theories concerning generally preferred flower traits, empirical evidence is largely missing. In this study, we used an online survey in which residents of the Czech Republic (n = 2006) rated the perceived beauty of 52 flower stimuli of diverse shapes and colors. Colored flowers were preferred over their uncolored versions. When controlling for flower shape, we found an unequal preference for different flower colors, blue being the most and yellow the least preferred. In the overall assessment of beauty, shape was more important than color. Prototypical flowers, i.e., radially symmetrical flowers with low complexity, were rated as the most beautiful. We also found a positive effect of sharp flower contours and blue color on the overall rating of flower beauty. The results may serve as a basis for further studies in some areas of the people-plant interaction research.

Habitat Selection Theory and the Preference for Flowers – Is There Empirical Support?

“…The authors also speculate about a possible human preference for flowers with zygomorphic or otherwise unusual shapes, because on average, they contain more nectar and pollen. However, our previous results found the opposite: raters disliked zygomorphic and unusual flowers (Hůla & Flegr, 2016).…”

“…A considerable number of studies have found differences in general human color preferences (reviewed in Crozier, 1999) and have discussed possible explanations for these differences (Hurlbert & Ling, 2007;Palmer & Schloss, 2010;Sorokowski, Sorokowska, & Witzel, 2014). There is also evidence for differences in color preferences of flowers (Hůla & Flegr, 2016;Yue & Behe, 2010) and trees (Muderrisoglu, Aydin, Yerli, & Kutay, 2009). For these reasons, we wanted to explore whether the color of flowers and fruits in our dataset influences their preferences.…”

“…This might be due to the fact that the topic of human perception of flowers has long been entirely out of the scope of evolutionary aestheticians and other researchers from related fields (which also explains the lack of current literature in the theoretical part of this paper). However, the renewed interest in the study of phytophilia and related human-plant interactions centered on plant morphology in recent years (Elsner & Wertz, 2018;Hůla & Flegr, 2016;Oberzaucher, 2017;Wertz & Winn, 2014a, 2014bWłodarczyk et al, 2019) leads us to believe that a reliable theoretical framework might be hugely beneficial for the whole field and that the habitat selection theory of Heerwagen and Orians has the potential to provide such a framework. However, empirical evidence is urgently needed.…”

The Meaning of Flowers: A Cultural and Perceptual Exploration of Ornamental Flowers

“…Thus specific perceptual characteristics connect to specific social meanings that interact to create an overall gestalt of pleasure. Shape was found to be the major characteristic, over color and other features, in evaluating beauty in flowers in a large survey including many flowers and many 2,000 participants [37]. In our study, while shape was the most prominent adjective that had a trend, we see from the first question that flowers with similar shape (i.e., circular versus long) were not ranked together.…”

“…Indeed, even though a certain level of complexity is highly appreciated, people rated simple flowers higher than more complex ones [37]. We suggest that simplicity values may be directly correlated with the level of complexity represented by the number of petals' whorls in various flowers .generic concept of flower.…”