"Music & Emotion"
(Graphic by Alan Cowen, found in news Berkeley article)
There are at least 13 universal emotions that can be used to map the subjective experience of music across cultures: amusement, joy, eroticism, beauty, relaxation, sadness, dreaminess, triumph, anxiety, scariness, annoyance, defiance, and feeling pumped up. Thousands of songs from genres like rock, folk, jazz, classical, marching band, experimental, and heavy metal have been studied by UC Berkeley researchers who polled over 2,500 participants in the United States and China. People felt energized by Vivaldi's "Four Seasons." They were energized by the song "Rock the Casbah" by The Clash. Let's Stay Together by Al Green and Somewhere over the Rainbow by Israel (Iz) Kamakawiwole both evoked sensuality and happiness. Meanwhile, the shower scene score from the movie "Psycho" was widely regarded as being defiant and heavy metal, exactly as its composer intended. Cowen said that positive and negative values, known in psychology as "valence," are more culture-specific. "People from different cultures can agree that a music is angry, but can differ on whether that feeling is positive or bad," he said.
"Fantasia"
This image depicts the "Bouba/Kiki" effect, it was named by the German psychologist Wolfgang Kohler. Kohler would display a pair of shapes to audiences: one was angular and pointed, while the other was rounded and smooth. Next he would ask the participants to name which of the forms was known as "Bouba" and which was known as "Kiki." Surprisingly, more than 95% of respondents concur that "Kiki" has a sharp shape while "Bouba" has a rounder one. Similar results from this test have been obtained globally, indicating a universal relationship between the ostensibly unrelated sensations of sight, sound, and texture. As psychologists have only lately started to investigate and understand synesthesia's effects—in fact, it is still frequently referred to as a "psychological disorder"—it has a highly interesting history. Even less is known about the nuanced role this cross-wiring of the senses plays in consciousness than about what generates it.
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