Relating Objective Complexity, Subjective Complexity, and Beauty in Binary Pixel Patterns

Nath, Surabhi S and Brändle, Franziska and Schulz, Eric and Dayan, Peter and Brielmann, Aenne (2024) Relating Objective Complexity, Subjective Complexity, and Beauty in Binary Pixel Patterns. Psychology of Aesthetics Creativity and the Arts. ISSN 1931-3896

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Abstract

The complexity of images critically influences our assessment of their beauty. However, studies relating assessments of complexity and beauty to potential objective measures are hampered by the use of hand-crafted stimuli which are hard to reproduce and manipulate. To tackle this, we developed a systematic method for generating 2D black-and-white pixel patterns using cellular automata and collected ratings of complexity and beauty from 80 participants. We developed various computational measures of pattern quantification such as density, entropies, local spatial complexity, Kolmogorov complexity, and asymmetries. We also introduced an “intricacy” measure quantifying the number of components in a pattern using a graph-based approach. We related these objective measures with participant judgments of complexity and beauty to find that a weighted combination of local spatial complexity and intricacy was an effective predictor (R2test = .47) of complexity. This implies that people’s complexity ratings depended on the local arrangement of pixels along with the global number of components in the pattern. Furthermore, we found a positive linear influence of complexity ratings on beauty, with a negative linear influence of disorder (asymmetry and entropy), and a negative interaction between the two quantities (R2test = .65). This implies that there is beauty in complexity as long as there is sufficient order. Lastly, a moderated mediation analysis showed that subjective complexity mediates the influence of objective complexity (OC) on beauty, implying that subjective complexity provides useful information over and above OC.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information and Comments:	© American Psychological Association, 2024. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. The final article is available at https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000657
Keywords:	empirical aesthetics, objective complexity, subjective complexity, beauty, cellular automata
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Human and Digital Sciences > School of Psychology
SWORD Depositor:	RISE Symplectic
Depositing User:	RISE Symplectic
Date Deposited:	13 Feb 2026 09:53
Last Modified:	13 Feb 2026 09:53
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/4848

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