The brain of the beholder dictates the manner in which beauty will be appreciated. While men process beauty with only the right side of their brains, women employ their entire brain for the activity.
Researchers were surprised at the findings that are detailed in a report published in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. According to researcher Camilo J. Cela-Conde of the University of Baleares in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, “It is well known that there are differences between brain activity in women and men in cognitive tasks. However, why should this kind of difference appear in the case of appreciation of beauty?” His answer reveals an idea that women link an object to language when they ponder it, whereas men tend to focus on an object’s spatial aspects.
Men appear to focus on "coordinate" spatial awareness that is located in the right side of the brain and involves precision mental mapping with the use of co-ordinates to establish an object's position in space. The "categorical" spatial awareness is located in the left side of the brain and involves evaluating the position of objects in accordance with categories such as above, below, left, and right.
Cela-Conde acknowledged that the explanation of differences in the perception of beauty does not explain why or how the human capacity to appreciate beauty evolved. However, he noted, “The differences that we have found might relate to the different social roles that, hypothetically, men and women had during human evolution.”
For the study, the researchers put 10 men and 10 women to the test by presenting paintings and photos of urban scenes and landscapes to them and then asking them to evaluate each scene and describe it as being either beautiful or not beautiful. During the evaluations by the participants, the researchers used imaging technology called magnetoencephalography to monitor images of magnetic fields produced by electrical currents in their brains. No differences were noted between male and female brains during the first 300 milliseconds, but increased activity was seen in all participants from 300 to 700 milliseconds for objects that were described as beautiful.
The most active brain region among participants was the parietal lobe, which manages visual perception, spatial orientation and information processing. The difference noted was that for the men, the activity was focused only on the right side of the brain, while both sides were active in the women.
Although there were differences between people as to what was described as beautiful and what not, the researchers found no identifiable differences related to gender. Regarding this aspect of the research, Cela-Conde said, “Any person can find beautiful a landscape, a building or a canvas that some others will find awful. But sex has little to do with those differences. Perhaps they relate with other variables, such as age or education.” He also noted, “It is curious that, using different neural networks, the final result is very similar in women and men. But this seems to be the case.”