The phrase “easy on the eyes” may hit closer to the mark than we suspected. Experiments led by Piotr Winkielman, of the University of California, San Diego, and published in the current issue of Psychological Science, suggest that judgments of attractiveness depend on mental processing ease, or being “easy on the mind.”
“Critically, the less time it took participants to classify a pattern, the more attractive they judged it.”
“This accounts for cultural differences in beauty – and historical differences in beauty as well – because beauty basically depends on what you’ve been exposed to and what is therefore easy on your mind.”