Edited by Dale Purves, Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School, Singapore, Singapore, and approved April 1, 2013 (received for review July 23, 2012)
Experimental evidence demonstrates robust cross-modal matches between music and colors that are mediated by emotional associations. US and Mexican participants chose colors that were most/least consistent with 18 selections of classical orchestral music by Bach, Mozart, and Brahms. In both cultures, faster music in the major mode produced color choices that were more saturated, lighter, and yellower whereas slower, minor music produced the opposite pattern (choices that were desaturated, darker, and bluer). There were strong correlations (0.89 < r < 0.99) between the emotional associations of the music and those of the colors chosen to go with the music, supporting an emotional mediation hypothesis in both cultures. Additional experiments showed similarly robust cross-modal matches from emotionally expressive faces to colors and from music to emotionally expressive faces. These results provide further support that music-to-color associations are mediated by common emotional associations.
Author contributions: S.E.P. and K.B.S. designed research; K.B.S., Z.X., and L.R.P.-L. performed research; S.E.P. and K.B.S. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; S.E.P., K.B.S., and Z.X. analyzed data; and S.E.P. and K.B.S. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1212562110/-/DCSupplemental.
