Fractals are patterns that show self-similarity at different levels of scale. Typically they appear in nature and this degree of similarity is approximate or statistical. However, artificial or exact fractals have also been studied and the advantage of these stimuli is the ability to more carefully control the relationships that occur across various hierarchies. In two experiments we studied the perceived beauty of a novel class of exact visual fractal in which we introduced reflection, rotation, translation, and random symmetries that repeated at a local and global levels. Rotation and reflection were consistently preferred to translation and randomness. Only reflected patterns were preferred at a vertical orientation. For all other symmetries there was no difference in preference between vertical and horizontal. In a second experiment we progressively eliminated the salience of local symmetry through opaque shading . Perceived beauty decreased with an increase in shading . For these patterns greater discriminability of their fractal quality makes them more aesthetically appealing.

分形是在不同尺度上显示出自相似性的模式。通常，它们在自然界中出现，并且这种相似程度是近似的或统计的。但是，也已经研究了人造的或精确的分形，这些刺激的优点是能够更仔细地控制发生在各个层次结构中的关系的能力。在两个实验中，我们研究了一类新颖的精确视觉分形的美感，其中引入了反射，旋转，平移和随机对称性，这些对称性在局部和全局水平上重复出现。旋转和反射始终优于平移和随机性。在垂直方向上仅优选反射图案。对于所有其他对称，垂直和水平之间的偏好没有差异。在第二个实验中，我们通过不透明阴影逐渐消除了局部对称性的显着性。随着阴影的增加，感知的美丽减少。对于这些图案，其分形质量的更大可辨别性使其在美学上更具吸引力。