Art Engagement and Symmetryphilia in Undergraduate Psychology Students

Abstract

Humans like symmetry. We call the general attraction to symmetry ‘symmetryphilia’. However, art experts may cultivate a taste for asymmetry. This study measured explicit symmetryphilia, implicit symmetryphilia and art engagement in first year undergraduate psychology students. We obtained large sample of 790 students across two studies. As expected, most students preferred symmetry, both explicitly and implicitly. However, there was no consistent correlation between explicit and implicit symmetryphilia. This suggests different cognitive processes mediate different kinds of symmetryphilia. We expected a negative correlation between art engagement and explicit symmetryphilia. This expected correlation was significant when combining data from both studies, but it was extremely weak (r = −0.074). We conclude that art experts may lose symmetryphilia, however this barely registers in psychology students who engage with art. This helps clarify the scope of recently reported art expertise effects.