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The fourth art often accompanies visual elements, whether in cinema or in advertising. A study, published in the journal Psychology of Music, highlights the existence of a surprising phenomenon between music and colors. The pitch of a sound would have an impact on our perception of colors.
It has been previously proven that our senses can influence each other. For example, ominous music can make a horror movie scene even scarier. But until now, little attention has been paid to the effect of pitch on our visual perception.
Researchers affiliated with Seoul National University investigated the issue by conducting an experiment with 30 South Korean students, with an average age of 24, who had no vision or hearing problems. The participants were placed about a meter away from an LCD screen and were asked to rate the brightness of various objects on the screen on a scale of 1 (dark) to 7 (bright). Throughout the exercise, the volunteers listened to different sound clips through headphones. Each of these songs conveyed specific emotions to the listener, according to the magazine Psypost.
The scientists found that pitch had a significant influence on the perception of brightness. Participants felt that visual objects were dark when they heard low tones. Conversely, they felt brighter when they heard music in higher tones.These results suggest the influence of musical pitch on introducing bias into our assessments of visual brightness in the context of simultaneous musical-visual experiences.“, the researchers write in their study.
In other words, this study provides evidence that our visual perception can be altered by our sound environment. But it does not explain precisely the origins of this phenomenon. Is it linked to genetics? To brain development? For now, the mystery remains. Researchers have not finished studying the way in which our brain sorts through all the visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory and gustatory information it receives, and gives meaning to what it perceives.
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