Emotional and semantic associations between cinematographic aesthetics and haptic perception

This study investigates systematic links between haptic perception and multimodal cinema perception. It differs from previous research conducted on cross-modal associations as it focuses on a complex intermodal stimulus, close to one people experience in reality: cinema. Participants chose materials that are most/least consistent with three-minute samples of films with elements of beauty and ugliness. We found that specific materials are associated with certain films significantly different from chance. Silk was associated with films including elements of beauty, while sandpaper was associated with films including elements of ugliness. To investigate the nature of this phenomenon, we tested the mediation effect of emotional/semantic representations on cinema–haptic associations. We found that affective representations at least partly explain the cross-modal associations between films and materials.