Shared and Distinct Genetic Sources of Variability in Visual Aesthetic Value

An open question is how individual sensory experiences acquire different subjective aesthetic values. Variability in visual aesthetic value is known to be formed and shaped over a lifetime, with individual experiences playing a crucial role. However, whether the formation of visual aesthetic value is solely influenced by environmental exposure is still a matter of debate. Here, we considered differences in aesthetic value emerging across three visual domains; abstract images, scenes and faces. We examined variability in two major dimensions of ordinary aesthetic experiences: similarity between each individual’s preferences and the group’s average (taste-typicality) and the overall aesthetic value evoked by visual images (evaluation-bias). We build on a discovery sample from the Australian Twin Registry originally analysed by Germine et al. (2015), and validate our findings in a partially overlapping sample analysed by Sutherland et al. (2020), where respectively 1547 and 1243 monozygotic and dizygotic twins rated visual images belonging to the three domains. First, we revealed that the three visual domains evoked different degrees of individual variability in preferences. We then showed that genetic influences could explain 25% to 41% of the variance in taste-typicality and evaluation-bias. Multivariate analyses showed that genetic effects were partially shared across visual domains. Results indicate that major dimensions of aesthetic evaluations are comparably heritable to other complex human traits. The exception was taste-typicality for abstract images for which we found only shared and unique environmental influences. Our study reveals that diverse sources of variation, both genetic and environmental, influence the formation of aesthetic value across distinct visual domains.