Do People Prefer Irrational Ratios? A New Look at the Golden Section

The Golden Section is proposed to be the preferred ratio in many domains. Starting with Fechner, there were several empirical studies concerning the preference of the Golden Section with inconclusive results. Our main concern is that the Golden Section can neither perceived no produced exactly since it is an irrational number. Therefore, we propose to give a closer look to preferences for ratios and not to restrict research to the Golden Section. Alternative hypothesis concerning the aesthetics of ratios might be that people prefer ratios in an area near or surrounding the Golden Section or that people prefer irrational ratios over rational ones. We conducted an online experiment where the participants had to select aesthetically pleasing sections from panorama pictures in different ratios. In addition to the one dimensional stimuli, in a second trial Fechner rectangles were presented to subjects using the same ratios. Results differ strongly for the one-dimensional ([0.66; 0.72]) and two-dimensional (1.0) stimuli.