Date of Award

5-2016

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Psychology

Abstract

An investigation was carried out to determine whether familiarization to the experience of visual dissonance would have crossmodal effects on the preference for dissonant and consonant musical stimuli. We hypothesized that subjects who viewed a large number of disharmonious color combinations would come to show greater liking for dissonant musical stimuli than their counterparts who had seen either harmonious or single color images. Findings showed that there was no difference in preference between groups, though musical experience and score on a benign masochism measure predicted larger differences between average ratings of consonant and dissonant chords. These results are discussed in light of prior findings regarding generalized preference variables and the short-term effects of a massive familiarization procedure.

Included in

Psychology Commons

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