The impact of the acoustic environment on human emotion and experience: A case study of worship spaces

Abstract

People’s interactions with the environment shape their experiences. Thus, understanding these interactions is critical to enhancing human well-being. Aural attributes play a significant role in shaping the perception of space in addition to visual attributes. It is well known that sounds evoke an emotional response, but less is known about how the acoustic characteristics of environments reinforce such an emotional impact. By adopting virtual reality as a platform for recreating 3D sounds and 360° visuals of built environments of worship spaces as case studies, this study aims to investigate the influence of the acoustic environment considering audiovisual congruency on enhancing the human experience through self-report and physiological response analysis. It also examines the role of cultural background in terms of familiarity with the acoustic environment. The convergent mixed-methods approach, merging both quantitative and qualitative analysis, provides a deep understanding of the role of the acoustic environment in enhancing the auditory experience. The results show that the acoustic environment and audiovisual congruency amplify the intensity of the emotional impact, and the amplification of the impact can vary depending on the acoustic environment of the building. They also reveal that familiarity with sound and acoustic characteristics can increase this impact.

Reverberation Time and Musical Emotion in Recorded Music Listening

“…'Nostalgia' may have a mixed valence (Batcho, 2020), while 'Wonder' and 'Transcendence' are under-researched from a valence-arousal perspec�ve. Algargoosh et al (2022) found effects for similar emo�ons when a room acous�c was applied to a recording, compared against an anechoic condi�on -including 'Nostalgic' and 'Spiritual'. In Mo et al (2016), 'Mysterious' and Reverbera�on Time and Musical Emo�on 'Roman�c' were associated with higher reverbera�on and are again difficult to map onto valence-arousal dimensions.…”

“…Other studies have related valence-arousal ra�ngs to source type and mo�on in an acous�c se�ng (Hagman, 2010;Tajadura-Jiménez et al, 2010b). In addi�on to 'impact' and valence-arousal, effects have been found across some more fine-grained emo�on categories (Algargoosh et al, 2022;Mo et al, 2006 -see Table 1).…”

“…Emo�onal responses to acous�c space for music may interact with the subjec�ve parsing of the auditory scene, in conjunc�on with aten�onal Reverbera�on Time and Musical Emo�on biases towards threat informa�on in space (Ehret et al, 2021), resul�ng in a dislike for extreme reverbera�on and nega�vely valenced approaching sources (Hagman, 2010;Tajadura-Jiménez et al, 2010b). Effects on emo�on categories such as 'Mysterious' (Mo et al, 2016) and 'Inspired' (Algargoosh et al, 2022) also indicate a possible connec�on with 'aesthe�c' emo�ons. Aesthe�c emo�ons occupy a contested status in psychological research and have been difficult to categorise (Menninghaus et al, 2019;Skov & Nadal, 2020).…”

“…An influence on such states is specula�ve; nevertheless, acous�c space may engage a range of emo�on induc�on processes, as outlined in the For the few studies incorpora�ng categorical emo�on measures, it is difficult to combine the results and relate them to wider literature. In Algargoosh et al (2022), emo�on categories deemed suited to worship spaces were employed, while Mo et al (2016) used categories derived from composi�onal expressive markings. These two choices of category do not overlap strongly, and alterna�ve categories have been employed elsewhere in musical emo�on research (e.g., Zentner et al, 2008;Cowen et al, 2020).…”

“…These two choices of category do not overlap strongly, and alterna�ve categories have been employed elsewhere in musical emo�on research (e.g., Zentner et al, 2008;Cowen et al, 2020). Furthermore, Algargoosh et al (2022) only compared two condi�ons: dry, or with an acous�c. The RT range in Mo et al (2016) was also rela�vely narrow.…”