Why can sounds like dogs barking or a phone ringing sound pleasant in some situations, but very unpleasant in others? We explored this question in our new paper out now in
@plosone.org:
doi.org/10.1371/jour... (a thread):
Hear it here: Built environments predict ratings and descriptions of ambiguous sounds
The built environments we move through are a filter for the stimuli we experience. If we are in a darker or a lighter room or space, a neutrally valenced sound could be perceived as more unpleasant or...
Imagine yourself in a dark building with narrow hallways. You hear a dog barking. You're likely to rate this sound as being more unpleasant compared to if you heard this sound in an airy, well-lit space. The meaning of sounds can be easily misinterpreted based on past experiences with them.
Jan 15, 2025 20:25The features of one's environment can prime us to interpret experiences in that environment in different ways. In this way, even an everyday sound presented in an unpleasant environment could be rated as unpleasant, or aversive.
Furthermore, spaces with distinct features can promote different behaviours. For example, sounds heard in a small, dark room could be more threatening than those heard in a large, well-lit room. But we do not know the extent to which these contextual features impact how we rate everyday stimuli.
To answer this question, we gave participants a series of everyday sounds (dogs barking, phone ringing, etc.) in either a small lab room with no natural light (Old; A) or a larger space with natural lighting (New; B). We asked them to rate and describe the sound's pleasantness or unpleasantness.
We found that participants rated the same sounds as less pleasant when they were presented in a smaller room with no natural lighting (Old site). However, they didn't use more negatively valenced language when describing the sounds they heard at the Old vs. the New site.
Nevertheless, bipolar sound ratings and the sentiment of participants' descriptions of how they felt about the sound were highly correlated. Taken together, these findings suggest a role for the features of built environments in impacting how we rate and appraise everyday sounds.
What's the significance of these findings? They suggest that, even while controlling for how participants navigated to the space, their familiarity with the space, and the sound's identity, the features of our environment can greatly shift how we interpret and respond to everyday sounds.
These results could inform future conversations on how to create built environments that are amenable to pleasant experiences, and emphasize the important of context when interpreting stimuli both inside and outside the lab.
Thanks for reading along! Thanks to Alan Kingstone,
@beckety.bsky.social, and Emily Qi for all of their support on this project, as well as NSERC and
@ubcpsych.bsky.social!
