When we perceive something beautiful, whether it is an attractive person, a landscape, a building, a mathematical proof, a piece of music, or an elegant solution, it may influence our way of thinking.
In Daniel Kahneman’s familiar terms, System 1 is fast, intuitive, and automatic. System 2 is slower, analytical, and deliberate. These systems are not literal switches in the brain, but they offer a useful way of understanding shifts in attention. What effect does perceiving something we consider beautiful have on our thinking?
Most discussions of Kahneman’s framework focus on moments when we move from intuition to analysis, because making ‘the right decision’ is often attributed to analytical thinking. Yet, from everyday experience, we know all too well that movement also occurs in the opposite direction. Certain stimuli can sometimes easily pull us away from deliberate reasoning. Examples include unexpected events, problems without immediate answers, or situations in which the stakes are high and decisions may have serious consequences. But meeting beauty may be one of them, too.
But how about the reversed direction? When do we switch back from slow and effortful reasoning to an easy, more intuitive (but supposedly more error-prone) way of making decisions? Perceiving something beautiful can not only distract us during our daily routine, but may also interrupt deliberate thought processes. Beauty can influence not only our emotions, but also the way we make decisions. Something striking immediately captures our attention. We stop and look again. This is possible because System 2 does not control the entire field of consciousness. System 1 continues operating, even while System 2 is occupied.
The person who perceives beauty may of course play an active role in this transition. Beauty often is not simply ‘received’. It is noticed, can be interpreted, questioned, and connected with previous knowledge. But still, how often do we skip these last steps that would bring us back to our senses and logical decision-making? How often do we intuitively go with the flow when we encounter something beautiful? How often does beauty make us lose our (system 2) mind?
When probing ChatGPT about the effects of beauty on Kahneman’s decision-making paradigm, it came back with this:
“An accidental encounter with beauty can interrupt either automatic or deliberate thinking. It captures attention through a rapid perceptual and emotional response, then either draws us into immediate experience or redirects deliberate thought toward the beautiful object.”
My sense is that in an increasingly fast-paced society, especially outside museums and galleries, the latter response is becoming less common. Still, being distracted by beauty can also have beneficial results. Two examples.
Beauty briefly interrupts concentration
Imagine an analyst working intensely on a complex financial forecast. She is comparing figures, testing assumptions, and holding several relationships in working memory. Sunlight suddenly falls across the office wall, creating an unexpectedly beautiful pattern of colour and shadow. Her attention shifts before she consciously decides to look. For a moment, the deliberate System 2 process is suspended by a fast perceptual and emotional response. She appreciates the scene, then returns to the spreadsheet, possibly refreshed but needing to reconstruct part of her previous train of thought.
Beauty improves the quality of attention
A researcher has spent an hour struggling to interpret a difficult set of survey results. Walking to a meeting room, she passes a carefully arranged display of flowers in the reception area. Their colours and balance catch her attention immediately. She pauses for several seconds, shifting from deliberate analysis to direct perception. When she returns to the data, the problem remains unsolved, but her attention is less narrowly fixed. She notices a relationship she had previously overlooked. In this case, beauty interrupts concentration, but the interruption helps reset it.
What we experience as beauty, and how we experience it, is deeply personal. So, as long as workplaces are not entirely operated by robots, it pays to consider how beauty can contribute. Perhaps beauty should not be viewed merely as decoration in organisational life. If beauty can influence how people attend, reflect and make decisions, then it becomes a factor in the quality of work itself. The challenge for organisations is not simply to make workplaces attractive, but to understand how moments of beauty can shape attention, by focussing on wellbeing, sustainability, inclusion and productivity (WISE).
Recently, in a Dutch survey among members of Logeion, the organisation for professional communicators, all these aspects were named, when members were asked how they feel about the added value of talking about beauty in an organisational context. (Download the summary here.)
