Art engagement and symmetryphilia in undergraduate psychology students

Humans like symmetry in many domains. We call the general attraction to symmetry ‘symmetryphilia’. However, there are different ways to measure symmetryphilia, and those who are more engaged with visual art may lose symmetryphilia completely and even cultivate a taste for asymmetry. This study measured explicit symmetryphilia, implicit symmetryphilia and art engagement in first year undergraduate psychology students. We obtained large samples of 527 students in Study 1 (where measures were on different days) and 263 students in Study 2 (where all measures were completed in one session). As expected, most preferred symmetry, both explicitly and implicitly. However, there was no correlation between explicit and implicit measures. This suggests different cognitive processes mediate different kinds of symmetryphilia. Finally, we expected a negative relationship between art engagement and explicit symmetryphilia. This effect 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 happens in psychology students who engage with art. This finding helps clarify the scope of recently reported art expertise effects. We are currently reviewing the best way to share earlier levels of data processing, so these can also be made open. Please contact authors for more details.