The Primal Brain: Why Embellishments Mesmerize Us

The Irresistible Allure of Shine and Touch

Picture a consumer picking up a business card edged with metallic foil or running their fingers over a brochure logo that’s raised and glossy. Instantly, the item feels special. It catches the light with a shimmer and offers a satisfying texture under the fingertips. This is no design fluke – it’s a strategic engagement of human biology. Marketers and print designers have long observed that shiny foils and tactile coatings grab attention and leave lasting impressions. Now, neuroscience and evolutionary biology are explaining why: such embellishments tap into primal instincts and reward circuits in the brain. Our attraction to glimmering surfaces and rich textures is rooted in millions of years of evolution and is reflected in how our brains process sensory stimuli.

An Evolutionary Attraction to All Things Shiny

Humans’ love of shiny objects runs deep. Very deep. Evolutionary biologists suggest that our preference for glossy, reflective surfaces may stem from an ancient survival impulse. One prominent theory argues that shiny = water, a critical resource for life. In natural environments, a sheen or glint often meant the presence of fresh water under sunlight. Over millennia, detecting a sparkle through foliage could lead animals (and our hominin ancestors) to a lifesaving oasis. Psychologists have proposed that “the visual appeal of glossiness is innate and stems from the human need for fresh water as a resource”. In other words, our brains may be hard-wired to perk up at anything that resembles a gleam of water on the horizon. Consistent with this idea, studies have found that surfaces which are shiny, reflective, or sparkling serve as informative cues to water in nature. Even in modern experiments, people unconsciously associate glossy textures with “wetness.” In one classic study, participants seeing a blank glossy sheet of paper described it as looking “wetter” than a similar matte sheet. This water reflex appears to exist across cultures and ages, from infants to adults.

Notably, research in the Journal of Consumer Psychology put this hypothesis to the test with multiple experiments. The researchers showed both adults and young children various images presented on glossy vs. matte paper. Both groups significantly preferred the glossy versions, indicating a natural draw to shine beyond mere cultural conditioning. Young children (too little to have learned that “gloss equals luxury”) still reached for the shiny images, hinting at an innate bias. One amusing observation: infants 7 to 12 months old, when given glossy objects, often tried to lick them. Toddlers literally put their mouths on glossy plates more than on dull ones, akin to an animal lapping water. This quirky behavior supports the evolutionary water theory – the babies might be following a primal script, treating a shine as if it were a tempting puddle. And in a thirst experiment with adults, the effect amplified: dehydrated participants found glossy pictures much more attractive than usual, whereas quenched participants were a bit less drawn to gloss. The thirstier people got, the more their brains seemed to crave shiny visuals, just as the water theory predicts.

Beyond water, evolutionary psychologists also note that in the wild, many valuable things have a sheen. Think of ripe fruits with shiny skins, or the iridescent glint of fish scales indicating nourishment or opportunity. Our prehistoric ancestors who paid attention to subtle shine (a quick glimmer of animal movement or the reflective surface of ripe berries)

were likely rewarded with food or survival advantages. Over time, natural selection may have privileged those who were visually attuned to novel, glossy cues in their environment. As one neuromarketing review put it, the human captivation with glossy visuals is “a human universal” with “strong biological underpinnings” linked to our innate need for vital resources like water. In short, the love for shiny things isn’t a shallow quirk, it’s built into our species’ story.

Wired for Novelty and Movement

Another piece of our evolutionary heritage is a brain that’s highly sensitive to novelty and motion. In the ancestral world, anything new or moving in the environment could signal danger or opportunity. Our survival depended on rapidly detecting changes: the flicker of a predator in the bushes, or the flutter of an animal that could be tonight’s dinner. As a result, the human brain evolved a novelty bias: new stimuli automatically draw our attention.

Neuroscience research shows that novel sights or sounds trigger a surge of activity in the brain’s reward centers. Exposure to something new causes a mass release of dopamine in the brain’s reward circuit (the mesolimbic pathway). This dopamine rush essentially yells inside your brain, “Hey, pay attention – this could be important or rewarding!” It’s the same mechanism that underlies curiosity and exploratory behavior, encouraging us to investigate what we haven’t seen before.

Shiny foils on a print piece naturally exploit this novelty-seeking circuitry. In a world of flat, matte print and digital screens, a reflective gold or silver foil is a sudden surprise, a pop of brightness that the brain registers as something novel in the visual field. The effect is almost reflexive. The human eye is a magnet for light. A single glint can draw attention from hundreds of meters away.  We’ve all experienced it: a flash of something shiny in the periphery instantly makes you look. That’s our ancient orienting reflex at work. Soldiers even

use this principle in reverse, in camouflage training, they learn that any stray shine (a watch face, a rifle scope catching sunlight) can betray their position immediately, because humans detect glint “instantly” against a dull background. We are hard-wired to notice what stands out, especially if it mimics movement. Interestingly, a reflective foil’s sparkle is dynamic; as the viewing angle or light changes, it produces little flickers of motion-like change. Our visual system’s motion detectors (originally meant to spot, say, a slithering snake or a running deer) will lock on to these flickers. In essence, a shiny metallic finish creates a beacon for the eyes, leveraging the same survival-driven attention system that once kept us alert in the wild.

Visual Salience: How the Brain Responds to Shine

Once a shiny embellishment has grabbed someone’s gaze, what happens inside the visual brain? Modern neuroscience reveals that gloss and luminance aren’t just processed haphazardly; the brain devotes specialized resources to them. Visual processing occurs in stages and pathways. Notably, the ventral visual pathway (the “what” stream, which helps us identify objects) appears to handle surface qualities like glossiness. In fact, functional MRI studies have pinpointed particular regions that light up in response to glossy surfaces. For example, research in Vision Research found that glossiness information is mainly processed along the ventral visual pathway, especially in an area of the brain called the posterior fusiform sulcus, which showed selective activation for shiny objects. In plain terms, our mid-level visual cortex contains a network attuned to detecting whether something looks shiny or matte. This makes sense: determining material qualities (wet vs. dry, glossy vs. dull) can be crucial – think of telling water apart from ground, or fresh fruit from rotten, at a glance.

Our eyes use a variety of tricks to infer gloss. Tiny highlights – those bright specks of reflected light on a surface – play a major role. The brain is so sensitive to highlights that even a small highlight can dramatically change our perception of an object’s material. We subconsciously notice the position, intensity, and even the color of specular highlights, because they tell us if an object is metallic, wet, or glassy. For instance, a greeting card with a foil-stamped logo has high-contrast highlights that scream “glossy!” to the visual cortex. Neuroscientists have noted that just by manipulating the highlight on an image of an object, they can change which neurons fire in these gloss-processing brain areas. The result is that shiny print elements engage the brain’s visual processing deeply, prompting specialized neurons to fire and signaling to the viewer that “this item has a different material quality.” In a marketing context, that can translate to perceptions of higher quality or luxury – but even before any conscious thought, the brain has flagged the shiny item as something worthy of attention. (It’s worth noting that while our brains are drawn to shine, they also integrate context – as one study humorously termed the “magpie theory” of attention, humans love bright objects but will ignore them if they’re irrelevant. Thankfully for designers, a foil accent on a brochure is contextually meaningful, so it gets the best of both worlds: it pops out, and it reinforces the message of quality or innovation.)

The Power of Touch: Raised Textures and the Haptic Brain

Shiny visuals are only half the story. The other powerhouse of print embellishment is texture, those raised UV coatings, embossings, or thick varnishes that literally add depth to a printed piece. Humans evolved in a tactile world, constantly using touch to explore and evaluate our environment. As such our skin, especially the fingertips, is equipped with an astonishing array of sensors, and a large share of brain real estate is devoted to processing touch. When someone runs their fingers over a piece of print with raised glossy elements, they are activating a rich somatosensory network that plain flat ink would never tap into.

Neuroscientists have shown that touch receptors in the skin respond to different texture features. Some nerve fibers react to coarse spatial patterns. For example, the raised bumps of a Braille letter pressing into the fingerpad. Others respond to fine textural vibrations – the

subtle friction differences when your skin glides over smooth versus rough paper. When you incorporate a raised gloss pattern on a brochure or a business card (say a spot-UV that you can both see and feel), you’re essentially delivering a two-for-one sensory experience: the eyes perceive the gloss and the fingers feel the contours. Our brain’s somatosensory cortex, which interprets touch, starts firing signals that say “hey, there’s a shape/texture here.” Each subtle ridge or embossed logo becomes an extra piece of information for the brain to latch onto, creating a more high-dimensional representation of the item than vision alone could provide.

This tactile engagement has powerful effects on perception and memory. Studies in neuromarketing have found that when people touch and interact with physical marketing materials, it triggers activity in the ventral striatum, a core region of the brain’s reward circuit associated with anticipation of reward and pleasure. In essence, touching something appealing (like a velvety soft brochure or a glossy raised logo) gives the brain a little pleasurable jolt. One Temple University study cited by researchers showed that physical materials produced stronger activation in brain areas linked to value and motivation than did digital presentations. This suggests that the mere act of holding a well-crafted print piece can subconsciously increase the perceived value of the content or brand. Indeed, there is a phenomenon in psychology called the endowment effect – when we hold something, we start to feel ownership and value it more. Interestingly, even briefly touching a catalog or direct mail piece can invoke a mild endowment effect, “subconsciously increasing the perceived value of the brand and its products”. That raised texture literally feels like quality, and our brains translate that into positive impressions about whatever is being offered.

Beyond the reward buzz, engaging the sense of touch also aids memory and emotion. The brain’s limbic system, which includes the amygdala (emotion center) and hippocampus (memory center), responds strongly to multisensory input. Research has shown that when consumers handle physical print, it stimulates these emotional and memory-related regions. The result is that a message delivered on a tactile medium can create stronger emotional responses and more lasting brand associations than the same message delivered on a flat screen. Think about receiving a beautifully textured invitation versus an email invite – the former not only commands attention in the moment, but it literally imprints itself more firmly in your memory. One reason is that the brain has linked the information with a rich sensory experience, forming more connections. As a Sappi paper company report put it, touch can “shift the brain into a deeper level of engagement, one more conducive to building lasting knowledge”. In one experiment, people were more likely to recall details of an advertisement when it was printed on high-quality, heavy paper than on cheap paper – even when the content was identical. Texture and weight provided a “memory boost.”

Multisensory Richness: Rewarding the Brain on Multiple Channels

One of the reasons shiny and textured print elements are so effective is that they create a multisensory experience. And the human brain loves multisensory richness. We have evolved to use all our senses in tandem to fully understand our surroundings. When multiple senses are stimulated together, the overall brain response is often greater than the sum of its parts. Marketers can take advantage of this by designing print materials that don’t just deliver information, but deliver it in stereo, so to speak, with visual and tactile cues reinforcing each other.

High-quality print marketing already engages sight and touch, and sometimes even smell (think of scented pages in a magazine). By adding elements like metallic foils (visual sparkle) and raised UV coatings (tactile feedback), designers amplify this sensory synergy. Neuroscientific insights confirm that such multisensory engagement lights up the brain. A neuromarketing study noted that print pieces with vibrant colors and appealing textures produce a stronger neural impact: “This multisensory experience amplifies the brain’s response and enhances the overall impact of the marketing message.”. In practice, a brochure that shines and feels distinctive can generate more excitement in a viewer than a purely visual ad, because it’s hitting both the visual cortex and the somatosensory cortex, as well as related emotional circuits, all at once. The brain basically says, “This is interesting on multiple levels,” which leads to better focus and enjoyment.

Activating multiple senses also ties into the brain’s reward system. We’ve touched on how novelty sparks dopamine release. Similarly, rich sensory stimuli (like a combination of intriguing sights and touches) can trigger the brain’s pleasure centers. Think of the small delight of popping bubble wrap, it’s tactile and visual and oddly satisfying. While a shiny

postcard or textured packaging isn’t exactly bubble wrap, it capitalizes on the same principle: the more sensory “content” something has, the more our primitive brain engages and finds it rewarding. In evolutionary terms, environments that were rich in sensory information were worth exploring (imagine a lush jungle full of colors, sounds, textures – likely full of resources), whereas bland environments signaled nothing to gain. Thus, we have an innate tendency to seek sensory richness, and modern embellishments are keyed into that instinct.

Reward Circuits and Emotional Payoff

Let’s delve a bit more into the brain’s reward circuitry, because ultimately marketers want to not just catch attention, but also leave people with a positive feeling. When a person finds a design element attractive – say, they think a foil-stamped package looks beautiful, their brain can respond in some of the same ways as it does to other pleasurable experiences. Neuroaesthetics research (the science of what happens in the brain when we experience

beauty) has shown that viewing artwork or aesthetically pleasing images can activate the orbital frontal cortex and ventral striatum, regions linked to pleasure and reward evaluation. In the context of print embellishments, this means that a visually pleasing shiny design might trigger a mini “reward response” in the viewer’s brain. We’ve already seen how touching print activates the ventral striatum’s anticipation-of-reward circuitry. It’s likely that seeing something particularly eye-catching can also engage the dopaminergic system, especially under conditions of novelty or surprise.

There is also a psychological reward in the impression of luxury or quality. Humans are very sensitive to cues of status and value (an evolutionary trait from living in social groups where resources and hierarchies mattered). Shiny, gleaming objects have long been associated with rare or precious materials (gold, jewels, polished stones) – things that confer status. Thus, part of our positive reaction to a shiny foil on a brochure may be a conditioned or innate response that “this is valuable.” One study on consumer perception found that people rated products with glossy, reflective packaging as more attractive and high-quality, even

when they couldn’t verbalize why. The authors noted that the effect of shininess on attractiveness was not solely due to assumptions about cost or effort, it seemed to have a direct sensory appeal that translated into liking. This suggests that beyond rational thought, a glossy finish itself gives the brain a little hit of positivity. It’s the same tiny thrill some of us get from shiny new gadgets or a sparkly new car, our brains interpret gloss as a reward cue.

Emotionally, embellishments can also create a sense of delight or surprise, which improves mood and openness to a message. A raised glossy texture might evoke an “ooh, nice!” reaction, a brief emotional uplift that marketers love to instill. That positive emotion can become intertwined with the brand message being delivered, thanks to the amygdala’s role in tagging experiences with feelings. Moreover, if the piece is kept (which high-end print often is), every time the person sees that gleam or feels that texture again, it can re-trigger a bit of that initial positive emotion. In essence, embellishments help form a pleasant memory loop: the brain’s reward and emotion centers are engaged on first contact, and the sensory cues continue to refresh that good feeling on subsequent contacts. This is invaluable for brand recall and loyalty.

Implications: Designing for the Brain’s Desires

Understanding these scientific insights gives marketers and print designers a powerful lens. It means that embellishments like metallic foils, spot gloss, embossing, and other tactile features are not just about making a piece “look fancy”, they are about communicating with the primal human brain. By leveraging our evolutionary tendencies (like attraction to water-like shine or sensitivity to movement) and our neural pathways for sensory and reward processing, a designer can create print materials that naturally command attention and resonate.

For example, if you’re designing a direct mail postcard for a luxury product, adding a silver or gold foil isn’t just an aesthetic choice; it’s putting a “beacon” on your mailer that the recipient’s visual system will almost reflexively notice amidst a pile of dull paper. If you include a soft-touch coating with a raised UV pattern, you invite the person to touch the card – and the moment they do, their brain’s touch and reward centers kick in, making them more engaged and even subconsciously attributing more value to what they hold. In a world saturated with digital ads that only appeal to our eyes (and often get tuned out), a tangible piece that speaks to multiple senses can create a memorable impression.

There are, of course, nuances. Context and execution matter. Research indicates that while gloss is generally attractive, there can be situations where matte works better – for instance, in conveying a “natural” or healthy image (one study noted consumers tend to think matte packaging looks more “wholesome” for foods). And too much shine or gaudy use of foil can be distracting or off-putting (the brain can be overwhelmed if everything is blindingly shiny – we don’t want to pull an “Icarus flying too close to the sun” scenario ). The key is to use embellishments purposefully: highlight the most important elements, create contrast, and complement the brand’s message. When done right, you’re not just adding visual interest – you’re aligning with what the human brain naturally finds interesting.

Embellishments as Brain-Friendly Design

Shiny foils and raised glossy textures may seem like modern marketing tricks, but as we’ve seen, their effectiveness is rooted in something very ancient and fundamental. They trigger responses in us that helped our ancestors survive and help our brains make sense of the world: notice the shimmer of water, feel the texture of the environment, seek out novel stimuli, and get rewarded for doing so. In the 21st century, those same neural and evolutionary patterns mean that a glint of metallic foil can capture a consumer’s eye, and a tactile print can win their affection (and memory).

Importantly, these insights give creative professionals a scientific vocabulary to justify

design choices. It’s not merely about decorative flair; it’s about neuroscience and primal biology. A marketing team proposing a high-end embossed, foil-stamped brochure can explain that this approach leverages multi-sensory engagement to tap into the customer’s emotional and memory centers, and that the visual shine leverages an “innate evolutionary attractiveness” humans have towards glistening surfaces. The result is a piece that stands out in a crowded media landscape not by chance, but by design – brain-aware design.

In an age where we are inundated with flat screens and fleeting digital ads, the tangible sparkle and feel of print embellishments offer a refreshing brain break. They engage more of the viewer’s sensory apparatus, leading to deeper processing and often a more joyful experience. As science continues to illuminate how our minds respond to stimuli, one thing is clear: adding a little shine and texture isn’t superficial, it goes straight to the heart of human perception.

Marketers and designers who understand this can create print materials that not only look appealing, but genuinely resonate at a neurological level, forging stronger connections with their audience. And ultimately, in business as in nature, those who know how to harness our innate preferences will capture our attention – and keep it – every time.

Sources:

• Meert, K., Pandelaere, M., & Patrick, V. M. (2014). Taking a shine to it: How the preference for glossy stems from an innate need for water. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 24(2), 195-206.

• Fast Company – Jaffe, E. (2014). “An Evolutionary Theory For Why You Love Glossy Things.”  

• CloudArmy (Neuromarketing firm) – Wagner, N. (2022). “Why Our Brains Love Shiny Visuals.”  

• Silvia, P.J. et al. (2018). Do People Have a Thing for Bling? Examining Aesthetic Preferences for Shiny Objects. Empirical Studies of the Arts, 36(1), 101-113.

• UF PRO (Tactical Gear) – “Why things are seen – mastering the 7 S’s of concealment” (2023).

• Sun, H.-C. et al. (2015). fMRI evidence for areas that process surface gloss in the human visual cortex. Vision Research, 109, 149–157.

• University of Chicago News – Wood, M. (2019). “How the brain distinguishes textures—from sandpaper to silk”.

• Burlington Press – “The Neuroscientific Edge: Why Print Marketing Triumphs Over Digital” (2023).

• Sappi – Rigsby, L. & Eagleman, D. (2025). The Neuroscience of Touch.

• Wikipedia – “Novelty seeking” (as of 2025).