"...abstract art may evoke common emotions..." is barely better than "My 6-year-old kid could do that." In 2005, Irena Pavlova, Arseny Sokolov, and Alexander Sokolov made the first study of emotions and dynamics in single shapes: they showed participants triangles, ovals, and lines in a variety … Expressing our emotions and our personality is the effect of an ever-flowing blend of chemicals mixing through our body. Since one symptom of Asperger Syndrome is an inability to detect emotional states of others, the team suggests that there is a direct link between perception of the physical orientation of an object and perception of emotional states.
This correlation held for anger as well, but only in the case of the oval and the line.This finding has implications for the field of art as well. Which appears fearful?Still, I concur that to anyone with any artistic background this comes across as something akin to a finding that discs make better wheels than cubes...I wonder if basic geometry like that is part of the facial and body language that autistics are typically blind to.Perhaps "random" isn't the ideal term to use there, but I did qualify it with "seemingly." The Shapes of Emotions Encoding intensity. "So what? Geometric shapes and emotion Research in the area Mapping the contours of particular emotions established the basis for later research Objectively neutral stimuli and emotional loaded content 2014 book chapter Happy expressions explode outward into a circular shape Angry. Shape, line, color, etc. Proudly made in Maryland.
Second, abstract art is "seemingly random collection of shapes"? Which appears more "joyful"? It would be very interesting.Some artists have quite elaborate, albeit idiosyncratic, element-to-emotion mapping systems, like Kandinsky.It's certainly possible that many individuals would have no emotional associations with any shapes, but that across the population, there are still significant correlations between particular shapes and emotions.I also find JKVisFX's reactions fascinating -- as someone who has Asperger Syndrome, he saw no emotions in the images, and also doesn't see any appeal in abstract art.I looked at the shapes and read the questions and honestly had now real "feeling" one way or the other about either of the shapes.
What part of such attributions are independent of cultural learning? Typically, if we use a direct quote at all on Cognitive Daily, it would be to give an example of a verbal stimulus or a participant's response.Interesting to note I suppose is the fact that I have always found abstract expressionist art to be utterly meaningless, it says nothing to me. Interesting follow up to classic Heider and Simmel work.But there are two implications in that last paragraph that are simply false. There's actually knowledge therein. In experiments as early as the 1940s, individuals have been found to consistently apply the same emotions to shapes in schematic cartoons: "angry" triangles and "loving" circles.
I just saw the same shape twice.Scott, and the others who are uncomfortable with this study:I would love to be a lab rat for some of these tests. These kinds of shapes also work great for graphics about the great outdoors, like hiking, camping and the like.