Hůla Martin, Flegr Jaroslav
Department of Philosophy and History of Science, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic.
PeerJ. 2016 Jun 7;4:e2106. doi: 10.7717/peerj.2106. eCollection 2016.
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.
毫无疑问，人们觉得花朵很美。令人惊讶的是，对于那些使花朵对人类如此有吸引力的实际特性，我们了解得很少。尽管进化美学提供了一些关于普遍受欢迎的花朵特征的理论，但很大程度上缺少实证证据。在这项研究中，我们进行了一项在线调查，让捷克共和国的居民（n = 2006）对52种形状和颜色各异的花朵刺激物的美感进行评分。有颜色的花朵比无颜色的花朵更受青睐。在控制花朵形状的情况下，我们发现对不同花朵颜色的偏好并不相同，蓝色最受青睐，黄色最不受青睐。在对美的总体评估中，形状比颜色更重要。典型的花朵，即具有低复杂度的辐射对称花朵，被评为最美。我们还发现花朵清晰的轮廓和蓝色对花朵美感的总体评分有积极影响。这些结果可为人类与植物相互作用研究的某些领域的进一步研究提供基础。
