Beyond Kandinsky: Exploring colour-shape correspondences through the lenses of emotions, individual differences, and aesthetics

Thesis

This thesis brings together historical and empirical research on colour-shape correspondences. Historical accounts usually start with Wassily Kandinsky’s universal visual language of art and design, which explored colours and forms in depth as fundamental building blocks. Whilst colour-shape correspondences provide an example of an intramodal sensory correspondence, modern empirical work in this area has typically been grounded in the field of crossmodal correspondences research. All empirical work conducted on colour-shape correspondences is examined through a systematic review of 28 articles (k = 50, N = 4599), finding, on average, colour and shape to be associated to a small to moderate degree in terms of effect size. However, many inconsistencies in research to date are also found. Over the course of nine experiments, the high amount of variance in colour-shape matches and their task and stimuli-dependent nature is demonstrated. Particular areas that are explored are whether certain shape characteristics can be found that predict chosen colour characteristics, the role of individual differences, and the relationship of colour-shape correspondences with aesthetics. Key conceptual, statistical, and practical issues are highlighted throughout the thesis. Finally, a theoretical groundwork for colour-shape correspondences is posited based on a dynamic representational geometry associative model for intramodal and crossmodal correspondences.

Authors: Dreksler, NB

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-mqwd4da5r
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Crossmodal correspondences; Aesthetics; Multisensory perception; Colour-shape associations; Intramodal correspondences; Colour-shape correspondences; Kandinsky
• Subjects: Experimental Psychology