Shared Friend Criteria Modulate Aesthetic Judgment of Faces and Paintings but Not Moral Beauty

Aesthetic preferences are shaped by social context, yet the influence of close peers’ standards across different aesthetic domains remains unclear. This study investigated whether friends’ aesthetic criteria modulate individuals’ judgments of faces, paintings, and moral beauty using a modified social conformity paradigm across three experiments. Results showed that individuals’ aesthetic judgments of faces and paintings were significantly influenced by their friends’ ratings, shifting systematically toward peer evaluations. In contrast, judgments of moral beauty were largely unaffected by peer influence. These findings suggest that social cognitive factors shape aesthetic judgment in a domain-specific manner: stimuli with relatively objective perceptual features (e.g., facial averageness and painting composition) are more susceptible to social influence, whereas moral beauty—grounded in internalized values—remains more resistant.