The emotional link between color and music: What happens with atonal music?

Abstract

In this work, we study the emotional link between music and color as well as the relationship that pleasure and familiarity have with music-evoked emotions, emphasizing on what happens with atonal music. This is important, since it is already known the role of music's mode (major or minor) on determining the perception of musical emotion for tonal music and, thus, its association with color. We decided to use Russell's (1980) multidimensional emotional scale model to assess music and colors, together with the four dimensions of the perceptual characteristics of color (Red-green, yellow-blue, saturation, and brightness) used by Palmer et al. (2013). Our results showed that atonal music shares a behavior similar to that found by Palmer et al. (2013) for tonal music, specifically, that music evaluated as joyful is linked to the colors perceived with that same emotion (saturated, light, and yellow), and sad music is linked to sad colors (desaturated, dark, and blue). Therefore, these findings reaffirm the importance of emotion on mediating the music-to-color association in both tonal and atonal music. Regarding our other variables, we found a positive correlation between pleasure and familiarity as well as between pleasure and emotional valence, although half of the music evaluated as sad (negative valence) was also evaluated as pleasant.

Brain electrical patterns associated with pleasure and emotion induced by tonal and atonal music.

“…In correspondence with previous studies (e.g., Valdés-Alemán et al, 2022), joyful music was overall evaluated as more positiveboth in Valence and Arousal-than sad music, which was perceived as negative. Nonetheless, within joyful music, tonal music was even more positive in valence than atonal music, which might be due to emotional ambiguity given the fact that this music was less familiar for the participants.…”

“…Regarding the relationship between pleasure and emotion, although joyful music was overall perceived as more pleasant than sad music, it is interesting to note that three quarters of the sad musical stimuli were rated positively in pleasure. This is in line with what Kringelbach (2013) states about the relationship between emotional states and pleasure, which, although interrelated, these two phenomena can occur through independent mechanisms, explaining why negative emotions can be accompanied by pleasurable sensations-as seen by the so-called paradoxical pleasure with sad music (Chabin et al, 2020;Eerola et al, 2018;Huron, 2011;Schubert, 2016;Valdés-Alemán et al, 2022;Vuoskoski & Eerola, 2017).…”

“…Thus, mode is an important factor for determining the emotion in tonal music, leaving an open question regarding atonal music—either classical from the European tradition or from other cultures as well (Lansky et al, 2001). Although some authors have found that intensity, tempo, timbre, and pitch can help people distinguish musical emotions in music from unfamiliar cultures (Balkwill et al, 2004; Bowling et al, 2012), more studies concerning music and emotion should consider atonal musical stimuli to explore their emotional effects (Valdés-Alemán et al, 2022).…”

“…Since the emotional and pleasurable components of an experience may occur through independent mechanisms, the emotional valence—positive or negative—of any given stimulus can elicit an incongruous pleasurable response. It is then no surprise that music evaluated as negatively valenced—for example, sad music—can sometimes be perceived as pleasurable (Eerola et al, 2018; Huron, 2011; Schubert, 2016; Valdés-Alemán et al, 2022; Vuoskoski & Eerola, 2017). Having said that, the emotional assessment of music through dimensional models (e.g., Russell, 1980) can be enriched with the incorporation of the pleasure dimension which, as mentioned, may influence the subjective experience of emotion (Kringelbach, 2013; Valdés-Alemán et al, 2022).…”

“…Complete table information can be found at Table1byValdés- Alemán et al (2022, p. 49). Labels correspond to each of the identifiers (IDs) of the musical stimuli used byValdés-Alemán et al (2022). Musical stimuli can be found at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list= PLsvgqb6GeL4zX4Ds17OkMw3dgmIzEW6fg.…”