Visual Perception Principles in Constellation Creation

Many cultures share common constellations and common narratives about the stars in the night sky. Previous research has shown that this overlap in asterisms, minimal star groupings inside constellations, is clearly present across 27 distinct culture groups and can be explained in part by properties of individual stars (brightness) and properties of pairs of stars (proximity) (Kemp, Hamacher, Little, & Cropper, 2022). The same work, however, found no evidence that properties of triples (angle) and quadruples (good continuation) predicted constellation formation. We developed a behavioral experiment to explore how individuals form constellations under conditions that reduce cultural learning. We found that participants independently selected and connected similar stars, and that their responses were predicted by two properties of triples (angle and even spacing) in addition to the properties of brightness and proximity supported by previous work. Our findings lend further evidence to the theory that commonality of constellations across cultures is not a result of shared human history but rather stems from shared human nature.