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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
Running head: DEGREE OF ANGULARITY PREDICTS BEAUTY AND THREAT
Beauty and the Sharp Fangs of the Beast: Degree of Angularity Predicts Perceived
Preference and Threat
Jay Friedenberg, Gina Lauria, Kaitlyn Hennig, and Isabel Gardner
Manhattan College
Department of Psychology
Riverdale, New York 10471 United States
jay.friedenberg@manhattan.edu
0000-0001-8872-9960
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
All authors at the time the research was conducted except for the first author were
undergraduate students at Manhattan College. All authors contributed to the study
conception and design. Stimulus preparation, participant scheduling and data collection
were also performed by all authors. The first author wrote the manuscript which was
subsequently read and approved by the coauthors.
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
Abstract
Preference for angular vs. curved forms has a long history in psychology but few
of the many studies conducted have examined actual degree of angularity. In two
experiments we present observers with randomly positioned and randomly oriented
texture displays of angles viewed within a circular frame. The angle conditions varied
from 0°-180° in 20° increments, covering the entire spectrum of possibilities including
acute, obtuse, right, and straight line angles. In Experiment 1, 25 undergraduates rated
the perceived beauty of these displays. In Experiment 2, the same stimulus set and
procedure were used with 27 participants instead judging perceived threat. Based on
the findings in the literature, we predicted that sharper angles would be judged less
beautiful and more threatening. The results were mostly confirmed. Acute angles are
preferred less but there are also distinct preferences for right angles and straight lines,
perhaps due to their greater familiarity in constructed environments. There was a
consistent and anticipated finding for threat in the second study: the sharper an angle
the greater its perceived threat. Fear of sharp objects as assessed in a personality
questionnaire was found to positively correlate with threat judgements. Future work
should look more closely at degree of angularity in embedded object contours and at
individual response differences.
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
Beauty and the Sharp Fangs of the Beast: Degree of Angularity Predicts Perceived
Preference and Threat
The study of angularity in aesthetics dates back more than a century with a
number of early studies showing that angled lines are associated with negative
emotions such as agitating, hard, and furious. On the other hand, curved objects have
been associated with more pleasant feelings like quiet, merry, and gentle (Hevner, 1935;
Lundholm, 1921; Poffenberger & Barrows, 1924). Bar and Neta (2006) more recently
demonstrated a negative bias toward jagged shapes. They had participants judge real
objects and meaningless patterns in a forced-choice like/dislike procedure and found a
consistent preference for shapes with curved as opposed to sharp contours. They
proposed that sharp objects trigger a sense of threat while rounded features convey a
sense of warmth. In a subsequent study they found greater activation of the amygdala
(involved in processing fear and arousal) in response to sharp-angled contours
compared to rounded counterparts. They hypothesized that such low-level contour
features might be sufficient to trigger a fast evaluative response used in determining the
presence of danger (Bar & Neta, 2007).
Silvia and Barona (2009) later replicated this finding controlling for other
preference factors like symmetry, prototypicality, and balance using as their stimuli
circles, hexagons, and curved and angular polygons. Damiano, Walther, and
Cunningham (2021) found that images with angular contours in an affective picture set
were rated as negative while those with long contours were rated as positive. For
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
abstract line drawings, smooth, long, horizontal contour scenes were considered to be
positive and safe, while short angular contour scenes were judged as negative and
threatening.
Leder, Tinio, and Bar (2011) examined whether the emotionality of the objects
themselves modulates this so-called "curvature effect". They found the curved over
jagged preference for objects with neutral and positive emotional valence only, but not
for objects with negative valence like "bomb" or "snake". This suggests that higher-level
semantic properties can over-ride or prioritize against lower-level contour features in
determining preference for such objects. Further evidence for this comes from a study
by Corradi et al. (2018). They found no difference between real and meaningless objects
at brief presentations, implying that the decision for these conditions was based on
contours only. However, at longer presentation times, the pattern of results diverged
implying the influence of semantic or conceptual factors related specifically to
meaningful objects.
Another stimulus property that influences this effect is the number of lines
present in a pattern. If the number of total contours is relatively small, the difference
between curved and angular shapes is found to be a good predictor for aesthetic
judgements of pleasing and harmonious (Stanischewski, Altmann, Brachmann, & Redies,
2020). But when the pattern contains a large number of lines, edge-orientation entropy
(roughly, the number of lines at different orientations) is a better predictor. The authors
interpret this as the result of separate evaluative processes for objects that have fewer
contours, as opposed to textures which have more.
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
Individual subject variables and experience have also been found to influence the
angularity effect. As such, these correspond to "internal" personality factors as opposed
to "external" stimulus based factors. Silvia and Barona (2009) obtained an effect of
artistic expertise. In this study angularity reduced preference at lower levels of expertise
but as expertise increased the effect of angularity decreased. Cotter et al. (2017) found
that people with higher levels of openness to experience were more sensitive to the
effect of contour when evaluating the pleasantness of abstract unfamiliar shapes.
Further, Vartanian et al. (2017) showed that nonexpert judges were more likely to enter
a curvilinear rather than rectilinear architectural space. They also found greater contour
sensitivity for beauty judgements among experts.
Preference for curved features has been shown in other arenas as well including
product design, architecture and paintings. Based on self-report measures study
participants are more likely to buy consumer products when packaged using round as
opposed to jagged designs (Westerman et al., 2012). Architectural spaces are also
judged more beautiful when they contain curvilinear as opposed to rectilinear design,
with curvilinearity found to activate the anterior cingulate cortex (Vartanian, et al.
2013). Participants also assign higher ratings to curved compared to sharp-angled
versions of abstract novel paintings and want curved versions more when asked if they
want to take the paintings home.
How can we best explain this phenomenon? Palumbo, Ruta, and Bertamini
(2015) found that the difference between angular and curved objects may lie not so
much in threat assessment but in the fact that curvature is considered more pleasant
than angularity. In one of their experiments they found no difference in
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
approach/avoidance reactions to curved and angular polygons even in a case where the
angles were more pronounced. However, their participants were faster and more
accurate moving manikins towards curved shapes. In a separate experiment they found
that angular polygons were associated with danger, negative concepts and male names,
while curved polygons were associated with safety, positive concepts, and female
names.
As indicated before the preference for curvature is believed to be an adaptive
evolutionary trait, favoring the avoidance of potentially harmful objects. Evidence to
support this comes from studies showing that nonhuman great apes (adult
chimpanzees and western lowland gorillas) also have this preference as demonstrated
in a two-alternative forced choice paradigm, albeit with different forms of behavioral
expression (Munar, Gomez-Puerto, Call & Nadal, 2015). Using this same paradigm it
was also discovered that curvature is preferred over angularity when tested cross-
culturally. Preference results are consistent across human samples tested in Spain,
Mexico, and Ghana (Gomez-Puerto, et al., 2017). These studies reinforce the idea that a
threat response to angularity is universal and hard-wired rather than acquired through
experience, although it may be modulated by other factors.
In most of the research previously reviewed, angular patterns were compared
against rounded versions. However, rarely was the degree of angularity ever assessed.
This is curious since it is quite easy to make an object look more or less sharp by simply
varying the degree of an angle. Simply put, smaller angles appear sharper and larger-
valued angles less so. The purpose of this study is to therefore measure the effect of
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
aesthetic and threat responses to the entire range of angularity. If smaller angles appear
sharper we would expect them to also appear more threatening. Also, since positive
affect is associated with curvature and negative affect with angularity, we would expect
lowered aesthetic ratings for sharper angles.
In both of the following experiments we use the same stimulus set. This is a
collection of angles presented at random orientations and locations within a circular
field. We use the entire continuum of possible angles. This includes acute angles which
are those greater than zero but less than 90°, as well as obtuse angles which are greater
than 90° but less than 180°. For comparison we also include right angles equal to 90°
and straight angles (lines) equal to 180°. These last two examples may be responded to
differently since they are highly familiar, being found everywhere in human-engineered
environments. For example most corners of objects like furniture, walls and doors are
90°, while the edge of manufactured objects and surfaces tend to be straight.
If sharper angles elicit more threat and negative affect they ought to induce
lowered aesthetic estimates as well. If this were the case we would expect ratings of
beauty to be lower for acute and higher for obtuse angles. Furthermore, as degree of
angle increases we might find a monotonic increase in beauty ratings. The opposite
pattern would be expected for threat judgements. Here, estimates of perceived threat
would be highest at smaller angles and hypothesized to drop monotonically as angle
increases. The prediction for right angles and straight lines could conceivably differ
from this pattern. Due to their familiarity, they might both be rated higher in beauty.
However, a straight line could be perceived as sharp. If this were the case, beauty
ratings for 180 angles would be lower and threat ratings for it higher.
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
Experiment 1
Method
Participants
Twenty-five undergraduates participated in order to fulfill a class requirement.
There were 13 males and 12 females. Vision was normal or corrected-to-normal.
Average age of the students was 19.6 years. All participants voluntarily agreed to
participate and signed a consent form. American Psychological Association ethical
standards and data confidentiality were followed. Stimuli and data will be made
available to the scientific community.
Stimuli
We employed ten different angle conditions dividing the interval between 0°-
180° by 20° intervals. This resulted in 20°, 40°, 60°, 80°, 100°, 120°, 140°, 160°, and 180°. A
90° condition was also included because of its frequency of occurence in carpentered
environments. To reduce any frame of reference effects the angles were presented inside
of a circular aperture. Thirty-three angles were placed inside of this space. This number
was determined a priori because it filled the area within the circle without being either
too dense or sparse.
Each individual angle was created by a straight line with one end anchored at the
center of an invisible circle equal to its radius. The second arm of the angle was an
additional line of equal length that was then "swept" around the circle by the specified
degree. In this sense, each line of the angle could be conceptualized as two equal-length
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
arms of a clock. The orientation of each angle was then assigned a random value
between 0° and 360°.
The position of each angle was randomly assigned as follows. The enclosing
circular frame was centered inside of an invisible square whose sides were divided into
100 equal units. An x- and y-coordinate were separately randomly generated and the
center of the angle was placed at this location. If the angle fell outside of the circle or the
arms of the angle touched the circle, a new coordinate pair was generated. A minimum
inter-element spacing equal to one half of the angle radius was enforced. If any two
angles came closer than this distance a new position was created. Figure 1 shows
examples.
Fig.1 Examples of each of the texture patterns used in both experiments by angularity
condition
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
20°
40°
60°
80°
90°
100°
120°
140°
160°
180°
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
The diameter of the global circular frame was 24 cm. The diameter of the local
invisible circles determining the angles was 2.3 cm, making the scale of the display
elements relative to the frame approxmately 10:1. The angles and frame were black and
made at two-point line thickness to increase their visibility. Each pattern was presented
on a white background. The center of the circular frame was at the center of the
computer screen and viewed at an average distance of 60 cm.
Procedure
Eight different versions were created for each angle condition yielding a total of
80 unique stimuli. These constituted a single block of trials. Trials were randomized
within blocks. Participants viewed three blocks in an experimental session (10 x 8 x 3 =
240 total trials) which took on average about 15 minutes to complete. Participants were
given as much time as they needed to respond.
Rating scale judgments were obtained for each trial. Beauty judgments were
made using the number scale that ran across the top of the computer keyboard. This
scale ran from 1 to 7, with “1” labeled as A Little Beautiful, "4" labeled as Average Beauty,
and “7” labeled as Most Beautiful. Participants were instructed to use any number from
the entire scale. They were told there was no right or wrong answer and that they could
rate the patterns in any way they wanted. This was done to reduce any experiment-
induced judgment criteria or demand characteristics. If any number other than 1-7 was
entered the participant would not be able to advance to the next trial. If this occurred
they were instructed to re-enter an appropriate value.
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
Results and Discussion
The data were first screened for outliers. Responses that took longer than 8.5
seconds were considered to be moments of inattention and removed prior to analysis.
These constituted less than three percent of the tail end of the reaction time distribution.
In addition, two participants were dropped from the analysis because they did not
follow instructions.
A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed with effect sizes
calculated as partial eta squared. There was a significant main effect of Angle F(9, 220) =
12.83, p < 0.01, ηp2 = 0.34. Figure 2 shows the bar plot of this interaction. Judgements
were lowest for the 20° condition, steadily increasing up to and peaking at 90°. After 90°
there was a decrease in beauty ratings but a sharp rise for 180°. A Tukey HSD least
square means analysis was performed to see which conditions differed statistically from
one another (Q = 3.16, alpha = 0.05). These results are shown in Table 1. As can be seen
the right angle was liked the most with a high preference also for the straight line 180°
condition. Deviations from 90° show a decline in ratings. Generally speaking, the more
acute or the more obtuse the angle, the less they were preferred.
Fig.2 Mean beauty ratings for Experiment 1. Bars indicate ± one standard error of the
mean
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
Table 1
Tukey Least Squared Means Differences HSD Test for Perceived Beauty with Means and
Standard Errors for Angularity in Experiment 1
Angle Mean Standard Error
______________________________________________________________
90 A 4.048 0.0749
100 A B 3.946 0.0734
180 A B 3.927 0.0739
120 A B 3.926 0.0741
80 A B C 3.768 0.0715
140 B C D 3.647 0.0737
60 C D E 3.578 0.0743
40 D E 3.422 0.0727
160 D E 3.419 0.0715
20 E 3.282 0.0740
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
Levels not connected by the same letter are significantly different.
The results show partial support for the threat hypothesis. The sharpest angle,
20°, was preferred the least. As sharpness decreased with larger angles towards the 90°
condition, there was a corresponding increase in beauty ratings. The peak at 90°
supports the familiarity hypothesis, suggesting that perpendicualar angles are preferred
because we see them repeatedly in synthetic and architectural scenes. However, we did
not find a further increase in ratings past 90°. The effect for obtuse angles shows just the
opposite: a decline in ratings for angles greater than 90° but less than 180°. The increase
we see on either side of 90° instead supports the idea that 90 degree angles may be
aesthetically cannonical. By this we mean that they are preferred under most
circumstances and that any deviation away from them produces lowered beauty
estimates.
Participants showed a clear preference for the 180° degree condition, equivalent
to a straight line. This result is somewhat unexpected. A straight line, even though it
lacks angularity, can be perceived as sharp. For example, straight lines of the length
presented here could be perceived as needles which are sharp and therefore
threatening. Instead, these lines were among the most liked of all the conditions shown.
Straight lines are also ubiquitous in human-made environments, forming the sides of
many objects. In fact, straight lines typically form the edges or contours of constructed
objects, while 90° angles usually form the corners. So familiarity may explain why both
of these conditions were liked so much. It should also be mentioned that we included
180° as a control. It is not an angle and in fact may be judged in an entirely different
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
way than angles, since angles are spatially two-dimensional and straight lines are uni-
dimensional.
Experiment 2
The first experiment showed that sharpness can reduce perceived beauty for
certain angles. However, it did not provide any linkage between degree of angularity
and perceived threat. Just because objects look increasingly sharp does not mean they
appear more threatening. In order to test this directly we performed a second study in
which participants rated angles in terms of perceived threat.
In addition, we collected ratings for several personality measures to see if these
might predict perceived threat. These measures varied in how closely associated they
were to the angular stimuli. For example, asking participants about their fear of sharp
objects is very closely related to the implied visual appearance of the angles. Asking
participants about their fear of getting cut or bruised is slightly less associated with this
attribute. Asking them about how anxious or emotionally sensitive they are is even less
associated. We expect that stronger levels of association for these questions will
produce stronger correlations with perceived threat.
Method
Participants
Twenty-seven undergraduates participated to fulfill a class requirement. There
were 7 males and 20 females. No student that participated in the first study was
allowed to participate in the second so they would remain naive regarding its nature
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
and aims. Vision was normal or corrected-to-normal. Average age of the students was
19.4 years. All participants voluntarily agreed to participate and signed a consent form.
American Psychological Association standards and data confidentiality were followed.
Datasets, stimuli, and other experimental materials will be made publicly accessible.
Stimuli
The same angular conditions from the first study were used. Size, configuration
and location of each pattern was identical. A participant information form was designed
to assess the degree of perceived threat from the angular stimuli and was administered
after the experiment was completed. This consisted of the following set of questions:
How scared are you of sharp objects? (1 = Not scared at all, 7 = Very scared)
Do you have a fear of getting cut? (1 = Not fearful at all, 7 = Very fearful)
Do you get injured or bruised easily? (1 = Not easily, 7 = Very easily)
Do you enjoy watching scary movies? (1 = Not at all, 7 = Very much)
Do you like to take risks? (1 = Very risk averse, 7 = Very risk-taking)
How anxious or fearful are you? (1 = Not anxious at all, 7 = Very anxious)
Are you an emotionally sensitive person? (1 = Not at all, 7 = Very sensitive)
Some of these questions are of a personal nature and may have been mildly upsetting or
distressing to the participants. This was therefore announced on the first page of the
consent form. The subjects were told that they could quit at any time or skip questions
that they found too upsetting. They were reminded that all the information gathered
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
was to be held in strict confidentiality and that at no time were individual names to be
used in the reporting or publishing of the results.
Procedure
Number of trials, blocks and presentation conditions were the same as in
experiment 1. Instead of rating beauty participants instead rated perceived threat. They
were provided with the following description in order to make a response. If you think
the pattern is Very Threatening, then enter a seven (7). If you think the pattern is only A
Little Threatening then enter a one (1). If you think that the pattern is just of an Average
Threat then enter a (4). In order to ensure that participants understood the response a
standard written definition of threat was on the desk adjacent to the computer for them
to consult. This was as follows: A threat is something that appears dangerous and can inflict
pain or cause potential harm.
Results and Discussion
Four participants were removed from subsequent analyses for failing to follow
directions. The reaction time distribution for the threat variable was examined and all
responses greater than 4.5 seconds were removed prior to analysis because they were
considered moments of inattention. This amounted to less than one percent of the total
data. Responses to the seven personality questions were not timed and all of the data
was for these rating scales was retained. The shape of the distributions for the
personality questions was normal or approximately normal and the full range of the
scales were used.
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed. There was a
significant main effect of Angle F(9, 220) = 161.51, p < 0.01, ηp2 = 0.86. As can be see in
Figure 3, there was a clear-cut effect for perceived threat. The sharper the angle, the
greater the perceived threat. In general average threat decreased with an increase in
angle, although there is a plateau in the middle, centering at 90°. There was also a more
noticeable drop-off in this downward trend for the 180° condition. The plateau in the
bar plot shows that the 90° angle and those adjacent to it were perceived less
threatening. The drop-off at the end shows that the 180° condition was also seen as least
threatening. Again, both of these effects may be due to the increased familiarity of right
angles and straight lines.
Fig.3 Mean threat ratings for Experiment 2. Bars indicate ± one standard error of the
mean
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
Table 2 shows the means and standard errors along with the differences based on
a Tukey Least Square Means Test (Q = 3.16, alpha = 0.05). Looking at the statistically
significant differences between means we can confirm that 20°, 40°, and 60° all differ
from each other and that 100°, 120°, 140°, 160°, and 180° also all differ from each other.
In contrast, 60°, 90°, 80°, and 100° do not differ statistically. This confirms the existence
of a levelling-off effect in the middle of the downward trend centered around the right
angle.
Table 2
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
Tukey Least Squared Means Differences HSD Test for Perceived Threat with Means and
Standard Errors for Angularity in Experiment 2
Angle Mean Standard Error
______________________________________________________________
20 A 4.880 0.0650
40 B 4.532 0.0663
60 C 4.160 0.0669
90 C D 4.010 0.0664
80 C D 3.997 0.0655
100 D 3.802 0.0666
120 E 3.468 0.0666
140 F 3.155 0.0658
160 G 2.810 0.0652
180 H 2.104 0.0648
Levels not connected by the same letter are significantly different.
We next correlated personality ratings with perceived threat. The mean rating for
each participant was correlated with their mean rating of perceived threat across all
angles for each questionnaire item. Only one of the seven variables was statistically
significant. Participants with a greater fear of sharp objects rated the angular patterns
more threatening r(21) = .50, p = .018. The scatterplot for this effect is shown in Figure 4.
This question had the highest degree of association with the pattern's perceptual
attributes. It was asking directly about sharp objects, whereas the other questions were
more remotely associated and related to skin sensitivity, anxiety, and emotionality.
Fig.4 Scatterplot and best linear fit for fear of sharp objects and mean threat ratings.
Each datapoint represents a single participant from Experiment 2
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
General Discussion
In Experiment 1 we presented angles at regular intervals to participants and
asked them to judge their perceived beauty. We hypothesized that sharper angles
would be perceived as more threatening and that this would induce a negative affective
state, lowering beauty ratings. The strict version of this prediction would have ratings
lowest for the smallest angles and increasing steadily as the angles become less acute,
then more obtuse until they formed a straight line. This prediction was partially
confirmed. There was an increase in ratings across the acute continuum, with the
function peaking at 90°, then steadily decreasing thereafter. Ratings for 180° were
higher than what we expected, indicating it was either not perceived as sharp or
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
processed differently because it differed from the other angles qualitatively in some
way.
The shape of the beauty function peaks at 90° with an asymmetric fall-off to
either side. This suggests that 90° and 180° may be "cannonical angles", perceived as
most beautiful and with any angles deviating away from them being perceived as
diminishingly less attractive. If this were the case the effect for acute and obtuse angles
may not be due to perceived threat but instead to their proximity to these two salient
stimuli.
One explanation for this is that perpendicular angles and straight lines are
commonplace in constructed environments. It is well-known that familiar objects are
preferred and that this can be created through repeated exposure or processing-fluency
(Reber, Schwartz, & Winkielman, 2004). If this were the mechanism behind our results
then it would be interesting to test participants from remote areas who have not had
much experience with such angles, as has been done in the classic study on the Mueller-
Lyer illusion (Deregowski, 1989; Segall, Campbell, & Herskovits, 1966). These studies
showed cultural differences in the ability to perceive the illusion based on one's
exposure to "carpentered worlds". Europeans and Americans who see many straight
and perpendicular lines were more likely to experience the illusion while Kalahari
hunter-gatherers who seldom see these lines were least susceptible.
In Experiment 2 we used the identical stimulus set and procedure varying only
the type of judgement. Participants in this study were asked to rate the perceived threat
of the patterns. Based on the findings in the literature we predicted that acute angles
would be judged more threatening than obtuse. More specifically, we expected to find
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
threat to be a monotonic decreasing function of angle. This was in fact the case, with
most adjacent angles being statistically different from each other across the spectrum.
The exception was for angles adjacent to 90° where there was a slight plateau. This rise
in perceived threat is small but it interrupts the consistent downward trend. The lowest
perceived threat is for 180°, so it seems that this straight line was evidently not
perceived as a needle or other sort of puncturing object.
Personality questions were obtained from our participants in this experiment.
We thought that indivduals who were more scared of sharp objects, had a fear of being
cut or bruised, or who were more anxious, fearful or emotionally sensitive might show
an exaggerated angularity effect. Conversely, we suspected that those who enjoyed
scary movies or taking risks might show a more attenuated effect. To this end we
correlated these measures with their ratings. The only question that correlated
significantly with threat was a fear of sharp objects, probably due to its specificity with
regards to the task. It may be that the personality questions we used due to their
sensitive nature, were not answered truthfully or did not accurately assess internal
states. If so, a more extensive test ought to be used, one that is more validated and
reliable.
In order to better to assess the relationship between perceived threat and beauty,
a within-subjects design could be employed where the same individuals rate angles for
both measures. Then, a direct correlation between the two variables could be made.
However, based on our two experiments with different sets of subjects it seems unlikely
that there would be the predicted inverse relationship. The data of Experiment 1 would
need to be decreasing continuously across the span of values to obtain this result. It is
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
possible that perceived threat affected beauty ratings for acute angles only, because it is
in this delimited range that we see rising and falling functions for beauty and threat
respectively.
It should be noted that the overall speed of threat judgments was much faster
than that of beauty judgments. The cut-off point for inattentive responses marking
outliers was 8.5 seconds in Experiment 1 but only half of this, 4.5 seconds in Experiment
2. The mean response time for beauty judgments was over two seconds (M = 2.10, SE =
18.74), while for threat it was about a second and a half (M = 1.45, SE = 11.70). In
addition, the RT distribution was more positively skewed in Experiment 1 (Skp = 1.73)
than in Experiment 2 (Skp = 1.03). These faster responses correspond to the idea that
perceived threat to sharp objects is an automatic and perhaps pre-attentive reaction.
Aesthetic evaluation of sharpness may instead be of a longer more secondary nature.
This interpretation conforms with that provided by Bar and Neta (2007) and with the
results of other studies previously reported (Corradi et al., 2018; Leder, Tinio, and Bar,
2011).
This study did not examine curvature at all. Our main concern here was with
angularity and how variations in angle would affect perception. Future work could
examine curved versions of these stimuli by substituting curves for lines, resulting in
"soft" angles. This might ameliorate the effect or perhaps eliminate it altogether. Also,
we deliberately used texture patterns to avoid any semantic associations, but it would
be interesting to look at degree of angularity as embedded contours in closed figures.
One could make random polygons that more closely resemble objects to see if the effect
still holds. These polygons could then be compared to meaningful real-world objects
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
whose contours were manipulated in the same way. As we saw earlier in the
introduction, there may be separate processing stategies for objects and textures
(Stanischewski, Altmann, Brachmann, & Redies, 2020).
Finally, we mentioned that familiarity may explain the different reaction to 90
and 180 stimuli. In addition to looking at cross-cultural differences, there are a number
of other experiential or personality variables that are relevant here. Art expertise could
be looked at, as could the Big-Five traits. Individuals high in art expertise showed
decreased effects of angularity compared to a control group (Silvia & Barona, 2009).
Perhaps this is because art experts have more experience viewing non-cannonical
angles in abstract artwork. Remember also that non-architectural experts were more
likely to enter a curvilinear space, suggesting increased familiarity with rectilinear
shapes or less automatic association of comfort with curves among architects (Vartanian
et al., 2017).
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
Statements and Declarations
The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work. The
authors declare that they have no financial interests. The authors have no relevant
financial or non-financial interests to disclose. This study was approved by the
Manhattan College Institutional Review Board and performed in accordance with the
ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Helsinki Declaration. All participants gave
their written informed consent prior to their inclusion in the study. All stimuli and data
from the study will made available in a public repository.
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Angularity, Beauty and Perceived Threat
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