Beauty Is Truth In Mathematical Intuition: First Empirical Evidence

Mathematicians and scientists reportedly used beauty as a cue for truth in mathematical judgment

common experience underlying both perceived beauty and judged truth is processing fluency

which is the experienced ease with which mental content is processed

Applied to mathematical reasoning, processing fluency

is predicted to increase intuitively judged truth

symmetry, a feature known to facilitate mental processing and to underlie perceived beauty, is used as heuristic cue to correctness in arithmetic problems.

Participants were more likely to judge symmetric additions than asymmetric additions to be correct

people who do not have enough time to analyze the problem use heuristic cues in order to assess the correctness of a proposed solution

The results clearly show that participants used symmetry as an indication to correctness, or beauty as truth