Technical Paper
Emotional Effect of Car Interior Sounds: Pleasantness and Power and Their Relation to Acoustic Key Features
1995-05-01
951284
Factor analysis of attributes describing various aspects of car sounds quality reliably shows that the emotional meaning and reinforcing properties of car interior sounds are mainly related to two categories: pleasantness and power. They form the four quadrants of an emotional space with one axis defined by “pleasant - unpleasant” and the other axis defined by “powerful - weak”. Application of these categories to a set of 51 car interior sounds reveals that no sound exists which combines a high amount of pleasantness with an equal amount of power. As a conclusion, a trade off between the technical realization of pleasantness and power is assumed (“trade off hypothesis of pleasantness and power”). It predicts that if the sound of a car is designed to be as pleasant as possible the impression of power might be strongly affected and vice versa. Thus, a compromise between these two effects cannot easily be realized.