Why do Humans Perceive Sunrises and Sunsets as Beautiful?
MARCH 17, 2024
How many times have you said: "what a beautiful sunset!" yet without stopping to think what actually makes it so beautiful? As a professional nature photographer, I have always been drawn to sunrises and sunsets and initially thought that it was due to my parents affinity for them, especially the sunsets. Maybe to some degree yes, but let's explore this a wee bit further.
According to Neurofied, a European brain and behavior consultancy, "Warm colors like red, yellow and orange evoke higher arousal emotions, such as love, passion, happiness, and anger. Cool colors, like blue, green and purple are linked to calmness, sadness and indifference." Knowing that most sunrises and sunsets tend to involve all warm colors, with the occasional exception of purple, this could lead one to hypothesize that sunrises and sunsets along with their respective twilights feed the brain arousal emotions and that could be what makes them attractive.
Philosopher Denis Dutton has an interesting theory on beauty which says essentially that art, music and other beautiful things are a core component of human nature with deep evolutionary origins. Furthermore, he suggests that the open plains with the occasional tree here and there - so often represented in traditional landscape art - are beautiful to us because they remind us of the savanna of the Pleistocene epoch back when Homo erectus was first developing a sense of what was beautiful and what wasn't. Moreover, red sunsets would have been a frequent and familiar part of these landscapes and in an era when night was the most dangerous time, and this helped to assure you were safely back in camp to appreciate the last precious moments of the day and that this was a desirable trait. I will even take this a step further and say that the emotion-arousing colors of a sunset remind us to "get back to camp" to enjoy the last meal of the day with friends and family. In other words, a non-verbal reminder using emotion-arousing colors to bring us back together, share a meal and be safe as a group.
A study published in the Journal of Education, Humanities, and Social Sciences looks into how color influences eating behavior, separating the color spectrum into two groups: warm colors, including orange, red, and yellow and cool colors, including green, blue, and purple. Here's a summary of what they found: Orange gets your attention, Red makes you very, very hungry, and Yellow makes you happy. Perhaps this is a billboard from mother nature reminding us that it is a good idea to head back to the campfire for some of Uncle Zog's grilled eggplant on a stick?
And what about sunrises? Throughout human history, many ancient civilizations respected sun deities and acknowledged the vital role of sunlight in promoting health and personal well-being. Today, modern science validates the innate wisdom of our ancestors, highlighting the multitude of benefits that exposure to morning sunlight can provide for our physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Aside from this modern analysis, I like to think about a sunrise as simply the beginning of the day. If the sunset is a billboard from mother nature that reminds us to go back to camp and eat, then the sunrise is mother nature's alarm clock, reminding us to get up off the forest floor and go find some food. Similarly to sunsets, sunrises also provide us with color-coded messages from the emotional color set to help us begin the day - Orange gets your attention, Red makes you very, very hungry, and Yellow makes you happy.
Regardless of the reasons why, I simply love a good sunrise and sunset. It's a beautiful way to begin and end the day, especially if I can capture a good image at the same time :)
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