What is the stunning Bouba-Kiki effect?
We’ve all heard that there are some people who see certain words in certain colors, but what if I told you that more than 90% of us do match words with shapes, as well as this is proven through various studies conducted in different cultures around the world on adults and toddlers alike?
Please take a look at the two shapes in the image below and try to guess which one is “Bouba” and which one is “Kiki”.
Yes, that is correct – the round one is indeed “Bouba” and the spiky one is indeed “Kiki”! People all around the world agree about this regardless of their native language, the continent they are living on, or how old they are.
This effect was first observed by German psychologist Wolfgang Köhler in 1929. He conducted the experiment on Tenerife (Canary Islands), where the primary language is Spanish. Much later, in 2001, Ramachandran and Hubbard did similar research on American college undergraduates and Tamil speakers in India. The results are amazing – over 90% of the participants match “Bouba” with round shapes and “Kiki” with edgy shapes. Furthermore, neuroscientist Daphne Maurer proved that even children two and a half years old show this effect as well.
Ramachandran and Hubbard have suggested that the Bouba-Kiki may exist due to the connections between sensory and motor areas of the brain. For example, the visual shape of the object is linked to the shape that our lips and tongue make when we say the name of the object. These findings further suggested that the naming of objects is not completely arbitrary (as it was previously believed).
To make things even more interesting, this is not true only for the names of the objects, but for personal names too. A study demonstrated that people tend to pair names such as "Molly" with round silhouettes, while names such as "Kate" are related to sharp silhouettes.
What does your name sound like?
I like to use at least two pictures for each article. While searching for the second appropriate image, I bumped into this cute (and free to use) image of a cat in a cup and decided to share it with you, although it is completely irrelevant for the article.
If you liked this post, then you would probably also like my recent article: Do you see any helicopters over children? Helicopter parents are all around us!
Have a wonderful day, week, and life!
Wow, this is quite an interesting article to read.
My native language is Yoruba. A major language spoken in a country in West Africa (Nigeria).
Your article really gave meaning to some things I've been experiencing for some time now. I've discovered over time that when a name is mentioned, I can predict the features of the bearers face.
Conversely, which is more interesting, is when I see some persons' face, I could correctly predict their name. It's somewhat funny, but it's true!
Big ups for sharing! Thanks.
Thank you, @alexoyebade, I'm glad you found the article interesting! 😊
Experiments suggested that facial appearance does to a certain degree depend on social expectations of how a person with a specific name should look like. If someone has a very rough name, his/her face will tend to be more serious, while if someone has a cute, round name, his/her face will tend to be cute and smiling.
I see that you are new on Steemit - good luck and keep up with the thoughtful comments! : )
Amazing right? It is even more interesting to know that this perception is influenced by specific cultural and linguistic experiences. They can actually chance our perceptual experience. Check out this research.
Wow, it's amazing how deep the research has gone with the adaptation of frequency, amplitude, and spikiness as the attributes of radial frequency of the words. It's interesting to know that there are some cultural differences after all, which is logical. Thank you for sharing!
Nice! Goes to show there is such thing as a universal language.
Indeed. : )
Wow, this is sooo interesting. I matched the pictures just like the article said. I read the comments and I agree, having a universal language would be awesome!! I don’t know why we don’t have one yet
Yes, psychology is full of interesting phenomena! 😊
Well, I think that English is slowly becoming the universal language.
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Really interesting; nice post congratulations! Also I have associated Bouba to the first image and Kiki to the second :-) Very beautiful even the image you have chosen for the post makes you smile. Congratulations again, I will read your next post ... sorry for the bad English ;-)
I'm glad you liked the post, thank you for reading and following! : )
Fascinating!
I think about this concept every time I create names for stories.
Here's another test for anyone reading this, using the name of a species from my latest novel: Harka. What kind of species do you think would have the name "Harka"?
It would be quite interesting to make a pool and see how many writers do consider the concept.
My guess is a blue-skinned, humanoid spices from woodlands. : )
They are blue-skinned! But they're actually more of an antagonistic, "brute" species. After writing my novel, I started reading the Dune series and Frank Herbert actually named the most antagonistic house, "Harkonnen." I was blown away by the similarity. And this is definitely a testament to the effect you're describing.