Exploring the neural correlates of visual aesthetics on websites

Abstract

Perceiving beauty typically provides pleasure through which it becomes a general human need. In the context of online shopping, websites should be designed, bearing in mind that users prefer websites that are visually pleasing. In recent research, website aesthetics have mostly been explored with qualitative self-reports measurements, eye-tracking devices, or even mathematical models. Moreover, also neuroscientific methods have been utilized to investigate websites’ aesthetics and beauty. Nevertheless there are only few studies that investigated the visual design of websites with neuroimaging tools, even though these neuroimaging studies might enable researchers to investigated unconscious cognitive processes. Against this background, this work in progress aims to open up fruitful avenues to measure website aesthetics and states hypotheses which brain regions are likely to be involved when it comes to the aesthetically pleasing perception of websites by users.