Perhaps, you already know the answer to this question. I don't know what you think, but in my opinion we feel the beautiful. This belief has accompanied me during my work as a designer, where I have discovered very interesting and exciting things. One of the moments that has remained in my mind the most is related to automotive design.
Do you remember the moment when you open or close a car door and the lights turn on and off? Once upon a time, a model from BMW introduced a special detail: the light that turns off slowly, not immediately. Do you remember it? I remember very clearly the first time I saw it and thought: “This is fantastic.”
Even today, I haven't found anyone who doesn't like this effect. But, as a designer, I'm not satisfied with the answer "it's nice" or "it looks natural" — I want to know why this happens. So I did some experiments and discovered that this transition from light to dark, which lasts about 6 seconds, is related to the way our brain reacts. It's not about rational thinking, but about feeling.
This led me to another comparison: the moment when the lights go out in a movie theater or theater. That moment doesn't make us think "now the movie starts," but it gives us a sense of anticipation and a pleasant emotion. It's a state related to anticipation and pleasure, which could perhaps be called a conditioned reflex.
Beauty belongs to the limbic system — that emotional mechanism in our brain, where sensory signals and “bits” of pleasure arrive faster than rational processing in the cortex. This is why we often feel beauty before we think about it.
Photo Credits: TED Talk London
